"An actor has many lives and many people within him. I know there are lots of people inside me. No one ever said I'm dull."
-- Shirley MacLaine

When she first arrived in Hollywood, gossip columnists described Shirley MacLaine as a kook in response to her love of nature, long-distance marriage to businessman Steve Parker and unconventional ideas. What she was was a true Hollywood original, an actress incapable of giving a boring performance. She had a knack for finding surprising shadings to all her characters. Frequently cast as ladies of easy virtue (she once quipped "I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way anymore. They leave it on the dresser."), she brought an innocence to those characterizations that made them touchingly appealing. And when she was cast as a simple workingwoman or a mother, she found the character's wild side in a way that kept her from fading into the scenery.

Her iconoclastic ways started in childhood, when she and brother Warren Beatty earned reputations as neighborhood terrors growing up in Arlington, Virginia. An early love of ballet led to her interest in performing. Realizing she didn't have the body of a classic ballerina, she transferred her interests to acting. She adopted her mother's maiden name, MacLaine, when a producer at one audition kept mispronouncing her birth name, Beaty (her brother dealt with the problem by adding an extra "t").

MacLaine's show business rise could have come out of an old movie. In a classic understudy-makes-good story, she went onstage in The Pajama Game when star Carol Haney broke her ankle. During the weeks it took for Haney's injury to heal, MacLaine was spotted by a talent agent and signed to a seven-year contract by independent producer Hal Wallis. She also was spotted by Alfred Hitchcock. When the director couldn't get Kim Novak for the female lead in his murder comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), he arranged to borrow MacLaine from Wallis. She made her screen debut as a young wife who becomes one of several suspects when her husband turns up dead in a picturesque New England small town.

Wallis provided MacLaine with some showy roles early on, like the model who vamps Jerry Lewis by singing "Inamorata" in Artists and Models (1955), but many of the films he put her in were lackluster. Yet he made increasingly large sums by lending her out to other studios while paying her the small salary stated in her original contract. A loan to MGM gave MacLaine her first chance to show off her dramatic potential. Cast as a prostitute in love with Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1958), she stole scenes effortlessly and won an Oscar® nomination for Best Actress. She also became the only woman to hang out with Sinatra's Rat Pack without dating any of the members.

MacLaine scored another Oscar® nomination as the elevator operator involved with her boss in The Apartment (1960), the first film to team her with Jack Lemmon and director Billy Wilder. Their reunion, for Irma La Douce (1963), cast her as another warm-hearted hooker and brought her another Oscar® nomination. By that point, she had bought herself out of her Hal Wallis contract at a cost of $150,000, a small price considering that her problems with Wallis had cost her the lead in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). The success of Irma La Douce put her in the box office top ten for the first time in her career and raised her fee per film to $800,000. Unfortunately, her popularity at the box office didn't last.

Ross Hunter's epic comedy What a Way to Go! (1964) underperformed at the box office, only to be followed by the artistic nadir of MacLaine's career, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1965). Even the highly touted Sweet Charity (1969) -- which marked Bob Fosse's directing debut and gave MacLaine her theme song, "If My Friends Could See Me Now" -- did poorly on its initial release. Her only money-maker of the period was the Clint Eastwood Western Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), in which she played a prostitute masquerading as a nun.

Off-screen, however, MacLaine was moving into a new period in her life. A growing interest in Eastern spirituality led to the publication of "Don't Fall Off the Mountain", a best-selling 1970 memoir about her early career and spiritual journey. One of her follow-up books, Out on a Limb (1983), would become the basis of a popular 1990 television movie in which she starred as herself. In all, she has written 11 books on spirituality, along with another praising 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.

In the late '70s, MacLaine staged a major big screen comeback. When Doris Day turned down the role of a ballerina turned dancing teacher in The Turning Point (1977), MacLaine jumped at the chance to co-star with Anne Bancroft. The hit film brought her her fourth Oscar® nomination and put her back on top. After co-starring with Peter Sellers in his last film, Being There (1979), she landed the role of a lifetime in Terms of Endearment (1983).

Jennifer Jones originally had optioned the rights to Larry McMurtry's novel about the tempestuous relationship between a Texas society woman and her daughter, planning to co-star with Sissy Spacek. Her choice for director, James L. Brooks, didn't see Jones in the role, however, and convinced Paramount Pictures to buy the rights from her. After considering Bancroft and Louise Fletcher for the lead, he chose MacLaine, claiming she was the only actress he spoke to who saw the film as a comedy. MacLaine struck sparks with on-screen daughter Debra Winger, which may have reflected their fiery off-screen relationship as they clashed over working methods. When Oscar® time rolled around, both actresses were nominated, but the vote went to MacLaine. On accepting the award, after four previous attempts and over three decades in the industry, she quipped, "I am going to cry because this show has been as long as my career! I have wondered for 26 years what this would feel like! Thank you for terminating the suspense."

With her Oscar® in hand, MacLaine took her time choosing a follow-up role, focusing her energies on a popular musical tour. She came back with an acclaimed character turn as an aging piano teacher in Madame Sousatzka (1988) -- which made her the only actor to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama without scoring an Oscar® nomination -- and very popular turns in Steel Magnolias (1989) and Postcards from the Edge (1990).

Now in her 70s, MacLaine is still an active member of the filmmaking community, even though she prefers to live in Santa Fe. Among her recently completed projects are the title role in the television mini-series Coco Chanel (2008) and Poor Things (2008), a black comedy re-teaming her with Steel Magnolias co-star Olympia Dukakis.

* Titles in Bold will Air on TCM

by Frank Miller