Shirley MacLaine
- Highest Rated: Defending Your Life (1991)
- Lowest Rated: Wild Oats (2016)
- Birthday: Apr 24, 1934
- Birthplace: Richmond, Virginia, USA
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A dancer, singer, highly regarded actress and metaphysical time traveler, Shirley MacLaine is certainly among Hollywood's most unique stars. Born Shirley MacLane Beaty on April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, MacLaine was the daughter of drama coach and former actress Kathlyn MacLean Beaty and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy. Her younger brother, Warren Beatty, also grew up to be an important Hollywood figure as an actor/director/ producer and screenwriter. MacLaine's mother, who gave up her own dreams of stardom for her young family, greatly motivated her daughter to become an actress and dancer. MacLaine took dance lessons from age two, first performed publicly at age four, and at 16 went to New York, making her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in Me and Juliet (1953). When not scrambling for theatrical work, MacLaine worked as a model. Interestingly, MacLaine's big break was the result of another actress's bad luck. In 1954, MacLaine was understudying Broadway actress Carol Haney The Pajama Game when Haney fractured her ankle. MacLaine replaced her and was spotted and offered a movie contract by producer Hal Wallis. With her auburn hair cut impishly short, the young actress made her film debut in Hitchock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). Later that year, she co-starred opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the comedy Artists and Models. In her next feature, Around the World in 80 Days (1956), she appeared as an Indian princess. MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a pathetic tart who shocks a conservative town by showing up on the arm of young war hero Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1959). She then got the opportunity to show off her long legs and dancing talents in Can-Can (1960). Prior to that, she appeared with Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in Oceans Eleven (1960). MacLaine, the only female member of the famed group, would later recount her experiences with them in her seventh book My Lucky Stars. In 1960, she won her second Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's comedy/drama The Apartment, and a third nomination for Irma La Douce (1963). MacLaine's career was in high gear during the '60s, with her appearing in everything from dramas to madcap comedies to musicals such as What a Way to Go! (1964) and Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity! (1969). In addition to her screen work, she actively participated in Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and served as a Democratic Convention delegate. She was similarly involved in George McGovern's 1972 campaign. Bored by sitting around on movie sets all day awaiting her scenes, MacLaine started writing down her thoughts and was thus inspired to add writing to her list of talents. She published her first book, Don't Fall Off the Mountain in 1970. She next tried her hand at series television in 1971, starring in the comedy Shirley's World (1971-72) as a globe-trotting photographer. The role reflected her real-life reputation as a world traveler, and these experiences resulted in her second book Don't Fall Off the Mountain and the documentary The Other Half of the Sky -- A China Memoir (1975) which she scripted, produced and co-directed with Claudia Weill. MacLaine returned to Broadway in 1976 with a spectacular one-woman show A Gypsy in My Soul, and the following year entered a new phase in her career playing a middle-aged former ballerina who regrets leaving dance to live a middle-class life in The Turning Point. MacLaine was memorable starring as a lonely political wife opposite Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener in Being There (1979), but did not again attract too much attention until she played the over-protective, eccentric widow Aurora Greenway in James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment (1983), a role that finally won MacLaine an Academy Award. That same year, she published the candid Out on a Limb, bravely risking public ridicule by describing her experiences and theories c
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Highest Rated Movies
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Being There
94% -
The Apartment
94%
Filmography
Movies
Rating |
Title |
Credit |
Box
|
Year |
---|---|---|---|---|
53% | Noelle | Elf Polly | — | 2019 |
20% | The Little Mermaid | Grandmother | — | 2018 |
40% | The Last Word | Harriet Lauler | $1.8M | 2017 |
0% | Wild Oats | Eva | $22.1K | 2016 |
A Heavenly Christmas | Pearl | — | 2016 | |
32% | Elsa & Fred | Elsa | — | 2014 |
51% | The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty | Edna Mitty | $33.3M | 2013 |
88% | Bernie | Marjorie Nugent | $6M | 2012 |
18% | Valentine's Day | Estelle | $110.6M | 2010 |
Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning | Amelia Thomas | — | 2009 | |
Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - The 1970s | Actor | — | 2009 | |
Hollywood Singing and Dancing: 1920s - The Dawn of the Hollywood Musical | Actor | — | 2008 | |
Coco Chanel | Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel | — | 2008 | |
Hollywood Singing and Dancing: The 1960s | Actor | — | 2008 | |
33% | Closing the Ring | Ethel | — | 2007 |
20% | Rumor Has It | Katharine Richelieu | $43M | 2005 |
75% | In Her Shoes | Ella Hirsch | $32.9M | 2005 |
25% | Bewitched | Iris Smythson/Endora | $62.3M | 2005 |
83% | Broadway: The Golden Age | Actor | — | 2004 |
Carolina | Grandma Mirabeau | — | 2004 | |
Salem Witch Trials | Rebecca Nurse | — | 2003 | |
Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay | Mary Kay Ash | — | 2002 | |
These Old Broads | Kate Westbourne | — | 2001 | |
20% | Bruno | Director Helen | — | 2000 |
Forever Hollywood | Actor | — | 2000 | |
71% | Get Bruce | Actor | — | 1999 |
10% | Joan of Arc | Madame De Beaurevoir | — | 1999 |
Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu | Narrator | — | 1998 | |
6% | A Smile like Yours | Martha | — | 1997 |
22% | The Evening Star | Aurora Greenway | — | 1996 |
7% | Mrs. Winterbourne | Grace Winterbourne | — | 1996 |
96% | The Celluloid Closet | Interviewee | — | 1996 |
The West Side Waltz | Margaret Mary Elderdice | — | 1995 | |
57% | Wrestling Ernest Hemingway | Helen | — | 1994 |
57% | Guarding Tess | Tess Carlisle | — | 1994 |
44% | Used People | Pearl | — | 1992 |
97% | Defending Your Life | Woman at Past Lives Pavilion | — | 1991 |
Waiting for the Light | Aunt Zena | — | 1990 | |
Full Fathom Five | Actor | — | 1990 | |
84% | Postcards from the Edge | Doris Mann | — | 1990 |
You're the Top: The Cole Porter Story | Actor | — | 1990 | |
70% | Steel Magnolias | Ouiser Boudreaux | — | 1989 |
78% | Madame Sousatzka | Madame Yuvline Sousatzka | — | 1988 |
Reincarnation: Coming Back | Actor | — | 1988 | |
Out on a Limb | Screenwriter Herself | — | 1987 | |
That's Dancing! | Actor | — | 1985 | |
13% | Cannonball Run II | Veronica | — | 1984 |
84% | Terms of Endearment | Aurora Greenway | — | 1983 |
Baryshnikov - The Dancer and the Dance | Actor | — | 1983 | |
Loving Couples | Dr. Evelyn Lucas Kirby | — | 1980 | |
94% | Being There | Eve Rand | — | 1979 |
61% | The Turning Point | Deedee | — | 1977 |
Year of the Woman | Actor | — | 1973 | |
The Possession of Joel Delaney | Norah Benson | — | 1972 | |
Desperate Characters | Sophie | — | 1971 | |
64% | Two Mules for Sister Sara | Sara | — | 1970 |
83% | Sweet Charity | Charity Hope Valentine | — | 1969 |
The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom | Harriet Blossom | — | 1968 | |
Woman Times Seven | Paulette/Edith/Eve Minou/Jea/Linda/Maria Terese | — | 1967 | |
Gambit | Nicole Chang | — | 1965 | |
The Yellow Rolls-Royce | Mae Jenkins | — | 1965 | |
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home | Jenny Ericson ('Strife' Magazine reporter) | — | 1965 | |
25% | What a Way to Go! | Louisa May Foster | — | 1964 |
79% | Irma La Douce | Irma La Douce | — | 1963 |
50% | Two for the Seesaw | Gittel 'Mosca' Moscawitz | — | 1962 |
My Geisha | Lucy Dell/Yoko Mori | — | 1962 | |
All in a Night's Work | Katies Robbins | — | 1961 | |
86% | The Children's Hour | Martha Dobie | — | 1961 |
50% | Ocean's 11 | Motel drunk | — | 1960 |
94% | The Apartment | Fran Kubelik | — | 1960 |
Can-Can | Simone Pistache | — | 1960 | |
83% | Some Came Running | Ginnie Moorehead | — | 1959 |
Ask Any Girl | Meg Wheeler | — | 1959 | |
Career | Sharon Kensington | — | 1959 | |
The Matchmaker | Irene Molloy | — | 1958 | |
The Sheepman | Dell Payton | — | 1958 | |
71% | Around the World in 80 Days | Princess Aouda | — | 1956 |
78% | Artists and Models | Bessie Sparrowbrush | — | 1955 |
91% | The Trouble with Harry | Jennifer Rogers | — | 1955 |
TV
Rating |
Title |
Credit |
Year |
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The Talk
2010
|
Guest |
|
|
Today
2017
|
Guest |
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The Late Late Show With James Corden
2015
|
Guest |
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The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
2015
|
Guest |
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71% |
Glee
2009-2015
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June Dolloway |
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86% |
Downton Abbey
2011-2016
|
Martha Levinson |
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Masterpiece
1971-2014
|
Martha Levinson |
|
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CBS This Morning
2012
|
Guest |
|
|
Downton Abbey
2010
|
Martha Levinson |
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QUOTES FROM Shirley MacLaine CHARACTERS
- Fran Kubelik
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I just have this talent for falling in love with the wrong guy in wrong place at the wrong time.
- Emma
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How old were you when you started taking lessons?
- Deedee
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Seven.
- Emma
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I was eight. Our bodies always objected, didn't they? The thing is-- you didn't stick around long enough to find out they revolt.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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I am just about at the end of my rope with you.
- Drum Eatenton
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Well, then why don't you tie a noose and slip it 'round your head?
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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What's the matter with you these days, M'Lynn? You got a reindeer up your butt?
- Nicole Chang
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You're not even honest enough to be crook.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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This is it, I've found it, I'm in hell.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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He is a boil on the butt humanity!
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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Drum, eat shit and die.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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You are a pig from hell.
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for fourty years!
- Ouiser Boudreaux
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I'm not as sweet as I used to be.
- Eve Rand
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What do we know of the man? Absolutely nothing. We don't have an inkling of his past. That could be an asset. A man's past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites scrutinity.
- Fran Kubelik
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What's the matter?
- C.C. Baxter
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Eh. The mirror.. it's broken.
- C.C. Baxter
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Eh. The mirror. It's broken.
- Fran Kubelik
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Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.
- Fran Kubelik
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[Regarding Mrs. Dreyfuss, Baxters neighbor] She doesn't seem to like you very much.
- Fran Kubelik
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She doesn't seem to like you very much.
- C.C. Baxter
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Oh, I don't mind. As a matter of fact I'm flattered. That anybody'd think a girl like you would do a thing like this over a guy like me.
- Fran Kubelik
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Why can't I ever fall in love with somebody nice like you?
- C.C. Baxter
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Yeah, well... That's the way it crumbles, cookiewise.
- C.C. Baxter
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Yeah, well, that's the way it crumbles, cookiewise.
- Hogan
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There's just one thing. [to sr. Sara]
- Sister Sara
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What's that? [answers]
- Hogan
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I shoulda never met ya.
- Hogan
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I sure wish I met up with you before you took up with them vows.
- Sister Sara
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You make good coffee.
- Hogan
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[answers] A man's got to take care of himself.
- Hogan
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Look, I told you not to brother me! (to Sister Sara)
- Hogan
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Look, I told you not to brother me! [to Sister Sara]
- Hogan
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Alright, its a small shrine, make it a small prayer. (Sr. Sara stopped to pray at a shrine)
- Hogan
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Alright, its a small shrine, make it a small prayer. [Sr. Sara stopped to pray at a shrine]
- Doris Mann
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It twirled up!
- Suzanne Vale
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That's a comedy...rule?
- Suzanne Vale
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That's a comedy... rule?
- Fran Kubelik
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That's how it crumbles..you know, cookie wise!!
- Fran Kubelik
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That's how it crumbles... you know, cookie wise!
- C.C. Baxter
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"I love you Miss Kubelik... Did you hear what i said Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you"
- C.C. Baxter
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[playing cards] I love you, Miss Kubelik. Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
- Fran Kubelik
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"Shut up and deal"
- Fran Kubelik
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Shut up and deal.
- Fran Kubelik
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Shut up and deal.
- Aurora Greenaway
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Would you like to come in?
- Garrett Breedlove
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I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.
- C.C. Baxter
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I love you Miss Kubelik.
- Fran Kubelik
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(Continues counting cards)
- C.C. Baxter
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Did you hear what I said? I absolutely adore you.
- Fran Kubelik
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Shut up and deal.