Distinguished American actress Patricia Neal, known for her cello-like voice and vibrant performances, is the guest of TCM host Robert Osborne in the latest edition of Private Screenings, a series of intimate interviews with some of the movies' best-loved performers.

Neal, who grew up in Knoxville, TN, shares memories of her Southern childhood and her early success as a stage actress in New York City, which included a Tony Award as best featured actress in 1947's Another Part of the Forest. She recalls her budding film career at Warner Bros., where costars included her friend Ronald Reagan and her married lover, Gary Cooper.

Neal's breakthrough as an important film actress came in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). But the high point of her career was an Oscar®-winning performance in Hud (1963) as the housekeeper Alma, a role Neal says she understood perhaps better than any other. In what Osborne terms the "Greek tragedy" period of Neal's life, she endured the serious injury of one child and the death of another - and then a series of debilitating strokes at age 39. At the insistence of Roald Dahl, the writer to whom she was then married, Neal fought her way back to major film roles, winning another Oscar® nomination for The Subject Was Roses (1968).

by Roger Fristoe