Shirley MacLaine

Named after actress Shirley Temple (who was six years old at the time), Shirley MacLean Beaty was born on April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty,[2] was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. MacLaine's younger brother is the actor, writer, and director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor.[3] Their parents raised them as Baptists.[4] Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.[5][6] While MacLaine was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, then back to Arlington eventually taking a position at Arlington's Thomas Jefferson Junior High School in 1945. MacLaine played baseball on an all-boys team, holding the record for most home runs, which earned her the nickname "Powerhouse". During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.[7]

As a toddler, she had weak ankles and would fall over with the slightest misstep, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet at the age of three.[8] This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys' roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class. Eventually, she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but then tightened the ribbons on her toe shoes and proceeded to dance the role all the way through before calling for an ambulance. Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique. She explained that she didn't have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite "beautifully constructed feet" of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle.[9] Also slowly realizing ballet's propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of dancing, acting and musical theater.

She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad and acted in school theatrical productions.

MacLaine sued Hal Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.[20]

In 1966, MacLaine sued Twentieth Century-Fox for breach of contract when the studio reneged on its agreement to star MacLaine in a film version of the musical Bloomer Girl, to be filmed in Hollywood, offering her instead the female dramatic lead in a Western to be filmed in Australia. The case was decided in Maclaine's favor, and affirmed on appeal by the California Supreme Court in 1970; the case is often cited in law-school textbooks as a major example of employment-contract law.[21][22][23]

MacLaine in Deauville, France, in September 1987

MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi. When Sachi was in her late twenties, she learned that her mother believed that her father Steve was not her real father but a clone of the real one, an astronaut named Paul.[24][25]

In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I'm Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband.[26] MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, with the exceptions of Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, Irma la Douce) and Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment).[27] MacLaine also had a long-running affair with Australian politician and two-time Liberal leader Andrew Peacock.[28]

MacLaine has also got into feuds with such notable co-stars as Anthony Hopkins (A Change of Seasons), who said that "she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with", and Debra Winger (Terms of Endearment).[29][30][31][32]

MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.[33][34]

She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books, including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom,[35] and practicing Transcendental Meditation.[36]

Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has also made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks's romantic comedy Defending Your Life (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the "Past Lives Pavilion". In Postcards from the Edge (1990), MacLaine sings a version of "I'm Still Here", with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to "I'm feeling transcendental – am I here?" In the 2001 television movie These Old Broads, MacLaine's character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.

MacLaine, 2011

She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–08. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing a Washington, D.C. UFO incident in the 1950s.[37] On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in April 2011, MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.[38]

Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern's campaign for president in 1972.[39][40][41] That year, she wrote the book McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs.[39]

MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.[42]

On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker's autobiography Lucky Me: My Life With – and Without – My Mom, Shirley MacLaine.[43] MacLaine has called the book "virtually all fiction".[25]

In 2015, she sparked criticism for her comments on Jews, Christians, and Stephen Hawking. In particular she claimed that victims of the Holocaust were experiencing the results of their own karma, and suggested that Hawking subconsciously caused himself to develop ALS as a means to focus better on physics.[44]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Teresa Heinz pose for a photo with the 2013 Kennedy Center honorees -- Shirley MacLaine, Martina Arroyo, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, and Herbie Hancock at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on December 7, 2013.

MacLaine was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in December 2013.[45] She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1617 Vine Street and in 1999 was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival,[46] and her likeness has been sculpted in wax for Madame Tussauds Las Vegas.[47]

In 2011, the government of France made her a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur.

In the 2017 Oscars Award Show, she presented the best Foreign Language Film of the year alongside Charlize Theron, and was featured in a segment about her work in The Apartment.

In 2019 she won the Movies For Grown Ups with AARP the Magazine's Life Time Achievement Award.

• Shower of Stars (1955) As Herself (2 episodes)
• Gypsy in my Soul (1976) TV special with Lucille Ball
• Shirley's World (1971–1972) as Shirley Logan (17 episodes)
• The Shirley MacLaine Special: Where Do We Go From Here? (1977); winner of the Rose D'Or
• Shirley MacLaine at the Lido (1979) TV special
• Stories from My Childhood (1998) as Narrator ("The Nutcracker Suite")
• Joan of Arc (1999) as Madame de Beaurevoir
• Downton Abbey (2012–2013) as Martha Levinson (season 3 recurring, season 4 guest)
• Glee (2014) as June Dolloway (2 episodes)
• A Heavenly Christmas (2016) as Pearl

• Erens, Patricia (1978). The Films of Shirley MacLaine. South Brunswick: A. S. Barnes. ISBN 0-498-01993-4.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Shirley MacLaine

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shirley MacLaine.

• Official website
• Shirley MacLaine on IMDb
• Shirley MacLaine at the Internet Broadway Database
• Shirley MacLaine interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2005)
• Shirley Maclaine at Emmys.com
• Shirley MacLaine interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, November 11, 1983