| Net Worth: | $60 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actress |
| Date of Birth: | April 24, 1934 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.7 m |
About Shirley Maclaine
The Trouble with Harry, starring Alfred Hitchcock, was MacLaine’s first film (1955). She was frequently cast as a good-hearted hooker or waif due to her distinctive good looks and tomboyish demeanor, as seen in films like Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958), an adaptation of a James Jones novel, and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) and Irma la Douce (1963), romantic comedies starring Jack Lemmon.
On April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia, Shirley MacLean Beaty entered the world. Ira Owens Beaty, her father, had positions as a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent. Kathlyn Corinne’s mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a theater teacher from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. MacLaine’s younger brother, Warren Beatty (before he changed his surname to Beatty), is an actor, writer, and director. At the time, Shirley Temple was just a young actress, thus she was honored with the name.
Shirley attended the Washington School of Ballet, where she towered above her classmates. As soon as she was officially a high school graduate, she made her way to the Big Apple. The producer kept pronouncing her name incorrectly when she tried out for the role of Juliet in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “Me and Juliet” She went by the name Shirley MacLean Beaty until she legally changed it to Shirley MacLaine.
She then took a role as Carol Haney’s understudy in the play The Pajama Game; when Haney suffered an ankle injury during a Wednesday matinee performance in May 1954, MacLaine stepped in.
A few months later, when Haney was still injured, MacLaine was signed to work at Paramount Pictures by film producer Hal B. Wallis after he witnessed her performance.
Shirley was planning to quit the show a few months in to play the lead in “Can-Can” but she ended up subbing for Haney after she fractured her ankle. Three months later, Carol suffered another injury, and this time, she had to step in once again—ironically, on the same night that film mogul Hal B. Wallis was in the audience. Wallis negotiated a five-year deal with Paramount Pictures for MacLaine to star in their films. She left three months later to film The Trouble with Harry (1955). Not long later, she was cast in the Oscar-winning Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days (1956). The next year, she starred in Hot Spell, and the following year, she played the main part in Some Came Running, for which she received her first Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.
MacLaine co-starred with Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) in 1960. Along with Audrey Hepburn and James Garner, she starred in William Wyler’s 1961 film adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour. For the film Irma la Douce (1963), in which she starred alongside Wilder and Lemmon, she was nominated once more. At the height of her fame, she stepped in for Marilyn Monroe in two films that Monroe had intended to star in near the end of her life: Irma la Douce (1963) and What a Way to Go! (1964). In Gambit, MacLaine co-starred with Michael Caine (1966). In that year, MacLaine filed a lawsuit against Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract after the studio backed out of plans to cast MacLaine in a Hollywood adaptation of the Broadway musical Bloomer Girl, which was based on the life of Amelia Bloomer, a feminist, suffragist, and abolitionist active in the mid-nineteenth century.
Starring Shirley MacLaine, Sweet Charity was directed by Bob Fosse and was adapted from Fellini’s earlier picture Nights of Cabiria (1959).
Don’t Fall off the Mountain, released in 1970, was the first of a series of best-selling autobiographies by Shirley MacLaine, in which she discussed not only her career in film and her personal connections (particularly her sibling relationship), but also her quest for enlightenment. Out on a Limb, one of her autobiographies, was originally published in 1983. In 1987, she cowrote, produced, directed, and performed in a television production of the story. Furthermore, she directed the Chinese-themed documentary The Other Half of the Sky (1976), which was nominated for an Academy Award.
For her performance in The Turning Point, which was released in 1977, she received her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination (1977). Peter Sellers’ final film appearance was in 1979, in the film Being There. Twenty years later, for Terms of Endearment, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress (1983). Shirley returned to filmmaking in 1988 with the commercial and critical success of Madame Sousatzka, which also won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1984 she finally won her Oscar.
MacLaine continued to act in films like Rumor Has It…(2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston, In Her Shoes(2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, and Closing the Ring(2007) directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer.
Midway through 1998, she took the helm of the Alex D. Linz-starring film Bruno (2000). Shirley worked with her longtime pals again in These Old Broads (2001) in February 2001, and she also acted in Carolina (2003) with Julia Stiles and in Salem Witch Trials (2003) with Kirstie Alley (2002).
MacLaine co-starred with Jessica Lange in the 2016 film Wild Oats. In 2018, she played the title role in a live-action adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. Returning to television in 2022’s Only Murders in the Building, she played a lead role.
Many other awards were bestowed upon MacLaine. Multiple prestigious prizes have been bestowed to her. For her contributions to American culture through the performing arts, she received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2012, the Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1995, and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2013. The Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award was named after her in 1998. In addition to her acting career, MacLaine is also a published author; her memoir, Out on a Limb, is a New York Times bestseller, and she has written other volumes on the subjects of metaphysics, spirituality, and reincarnation (1983).
