Shirley MacLaine Biography

Shirley MacLaine won a best actress Oscar for playing quirky matriarch Aurora Greenway in the tearjerker Terms of Endearment (1983, with Deborah Winger and Jack Nicholson).

MacLaine got her start as a Broadway chorine in the 1950s, eventually moving to Hollywood to began a film career.

She was most active in the 1960s, with roles ranging from a charming Parisian prostitute in Irma la Douce (1963, with Jack Lemmon) to a faux-nun in Two Mules for Sister Sara (1969, with Clint Eastwood).

In the 1980s MacLaine became known for her faith in reincarnation, angels, the power of crystals and other unorthodox “New Age” beliefs. (As MacLaine has stated on her own website, “I believe that when we have shed a physical body, our spirit can re-visit the physical plane of existence.”)

She addressed these topics at length in her books Out On a Limb (1983) and Dancing in the Light (1986).

In all she has been nominated five times for acting Academy Awards, for Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce, The Turning Point (1977, with Anne Bancroft) and Terms of Endearment (her only win).