Joanne Woodward

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American former actress. She made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character. Her accolades include an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She is the oldest living winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Woodward is perhaps best known for her performance as a woman with dissociative identity disorder in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Until his death in 2008, she was married for fifty years to actor Paul Newman, with whom she often collaborated either as a co-star, or as an actor in films directed or produced by him. In 1990, Woodward earned a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College at age 60, graduating alongside her daughter Clea.

Early life Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, the daughter of Elinor (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward Sr. Her middle names, "Gignilliat Trimmier", are of Huguenot origin. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of film.

Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's partner. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977 in a television production of Come Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him, and he told her he remembered.

The family moved once again to Greenville, South Carolina, when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced.

Woodward majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, then headed to New York City to perform on the stage.

Career

Early career

In 1952, Woodward made her first television appearance on an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents titled "Penny". She also auditioned for roles on the stage, becoming an understudy during the run of the William Inge drama Picnic in 1953–1954. It was there that she met her future husband Paul Newman, For her next role, she starred in A Kiss Before Dying (1956) as an heiress pursued by a college student (Robert Wagner) who will stop at nothing to win her over.

Woodward's career included TV, stage and feature film acting. In 1956 she returned to Broadway to star in The Lovers. It had only a brief run (but was later filmed as The War Lord (1965)). She also appeared on television drama shows including Philco Playhouse, The 20th Century-Fox Hour, The United States Steel Hour, General Electric Theater, Four Star Playhouse, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Kraft Theatre, The Alcoa Hour, Studio One in Hollywood, and Climax.

Film stardom

In 1957, Woodward astounded audiences and critics alike with her performance in The Three Faces of Eve. She portrayed a woman with three distinct personalities — a southern housewife, a sexually voracious "bad girl", and a young woman — and gave each their own unique voices and gestures. For her work on the film, Woodward won an Academy Award for Best Actress in a dress she sewed herself, the only Best Actress winner to date to do so.

With Woodward's credentials as a star attraction established, Fox gave her top billing in No Down Payment (1957), directed by Martin Ritt and produced by Jerry Wald. She was re-united with Ritt on another Faulkner adaptation, The Sound and the Fury (1959), with Yul Brynner. Sidney Lumet cast Woodward alongside Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind (1960), a box office disappointment. More popular was a third film with Newman, From the Terrace (1960), which Woodward later admitted to having "affection" for "because of the way I looked like Lana Turner". The couple then made Paris Blues (1961) with Ritt. For her title role in The Stripper (1963), Joanne was coached in technique by burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1966, she appeared as Mary in A Big Hand for the Little Lady, and starred alongside Sean Connery in A Fine Madness. In Rachel Rachel (1968), produced and directed by Newman, Woodward played a schoolteacher hoping for love. This film won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

In 1972, Woodward starred in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. For this performance as a single mother challenged by her daughters (one of them played by her actual daughter, Nell), she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. She then starred in the mid-life crisis drama Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), written by Stewart Stern, for which she received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Woodward was to have co-starred with Robert Shaw in Strindberg's The Dance of Death at Lincoln Center in 1974, but withdrew from the production during rehearsals. "New York puts a pressure on you that I don't react well to, with the critics and all that," she later said. "I like to act in a relaxed atmosphere."

Woodward supported Burt Reynolds in The End (1978), and as the '70s progressed did more television drama. She did A Christmas to Remember (1979) on TV. The decade ended with The Streets of L.A. (1979). Woodward also directed an episode of Family in 1979. For TV, she appeared in Come Back, Little Sheba (1977) with Laurence Olivier, and See How She Runs (1978). The latter won her an Emmy.

Woodward's credits in the 1980s included The Shadow Box (1980), directed by Newman, and Crisis at Central High (1981) for TV. She also returned to Broadway for Candida (1981–1982), a production directed by Michael Cristofer that was filmed in 1982. Woodward was soon an Academy Award winner, winning her Oscar on March 28. Although he was nominated many times, Newman did not achieve a win until 1986. Woodward and Newman worked together on many projects, including films where they costarred, or where he was the director or producer.

Woodward and Newman appeared in many films together during the 1950s and '60s. The first was The Long Hot Summer (1958), followed by Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), and A New Kind of Love (1963).

Only two months after their wedding, Woodward won her first Academy Award. Newman earned his first nomination later that year, in 1959, for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958). Both at the top of their game as film stars, Woodward and Newman became a celebrity power couple and were featured in countless magazines and articles for the next fifty years. Woodward's family life, she felt, deepened at the expense of her film career. She later said:Initially, I probably had a real movie-star dream. It faded somewhere in my mid-30s, when I realized I wasn't going to be that kind of actor. It was painful. Also, I curtailed my career because of my children. Quite a bit. I resented it at the time, which was not a good way to be around the children. Paul was away on location a lot. I wouldn't go on location because of the children. I did once, and felt overwhelmed with guilt. One of her most acclaimed performances, she garnered her fourth Academy Award nomination, and was selected as the year's Best Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

In 1993, Woodward appeared in the film Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks, and, in the same year, narrated Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence. Woodward did two additional television films: Foreign Affairs (1993) and Blind Spot (1993). Woodward was a co-producer of Blind Spot, a drama about drug addiction, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Mini-Series or a Movie. She co-starred in the television film Breathing Lessons (1995). Also in 1995, Woodward directed off-Broadway revivals of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy and Waiting for Lefty at the Blue Light Theater Company in New York.

In the twenty-first century, Woodward moved more into production and directorial roles. She served as the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse from 2001 to 2005. She was executive producer of the 2003 television production of Our Town, featuring Newman as the stage manager (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award). She and Newman also appeared in Empire Falls (2005) for TV. Woodward also recorded a reading of singer John Mellencamp's song "The Real Life" for his box set On the Rural Route 7609.

Woodward had the lead in Change in the Wind (2010). In 2011, she narrated the Scholastic/Weston Woods film All the World.

In 2022, Woodward and Newman were the subject of a six-part documentary by Ethan Hawke, The Last Movie Stars, which premiered on HBO Max. There was no real engagement; Woodward claims that she was a "beard" for Vidal, who was gay. Woodward shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles for a short time and they remained friends. Woodward has said, "He's very good-looking and very sexy and all of those things but all that goes out the window finally, and what finally is left is if you can make somebody laugh. And he sure does keep me laughing". Newman attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination".

When Paul Newman was asked, in an interview with Playboy magazine, how he remained faithful to Woodward, Newman responded, "I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?" Woodward has three daughters with Newman, Elinor Teresa "Nell" (1959), Melissa Stewart (1961) and Claire Olivia "Clea" (1965).

Woodward took up ballet in her thirties as a way to stay in shape, eventually going en pointe. Woodward and Newman were mentors to Allison Janney, whom they had met when Janney, a Kenyon College freshman, was cast in a play that Newman directed. Janney acknowledged this support in her Oscar speech.

Woodward and Newman were supporters of the Democratic Party. They were conspicuous supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy in his unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign, attending a benefit for his campaign at Arthur's Restaurant on April 1, 1968. Documents declassified in 2017 show that the National Security Agency had created a biographical file on Woodward as part of its monitoring of prominent US citizens whose names appeared in signals intelligence.

In 1988, Newman and Woodward established the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a nonprofit residential summer camp, and year-round center named after the Wyoming mountain hideaway of the outlaws in Newman's film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The camp, located in Ashford, Connecticut, provides free services to 20,000 children and their families coping with cancer and other serious illnesses. In 2012, their daughter Clea Newman took charge of the camp's parent organization, the SeriousFun Children's Network.

In 1990, after working toward her bachelor's degree for more than 10 years, Woodward graduated from Sarah Lawrence College along with her daughter Clea. In 1992, along with Newman, Woodward was awarded the Kennedy Center honors for lifetime achievement. Woodward last appeared publicly in 2013.

Acting credits Film

Television

Theater Year Title Role Playwright Venue Ref. 1955 The Lovers Douane Leslie Stevens Martin Beck Theatre, Broadway 1964 Baby Want a Kiss Mavis James Costigan Little Theatre, Broadway 1981 Candida Candida George Bernard Shaw Circle in the Square, Broadway 2002 Our Town Artistic Director Thorton Wilder Booth Theatre, Broadway

Awards and nominations

In 1958, Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve. She was nominated for Best Actress in 1969 for Rachel, Rachel; in 1974 for Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams; and in 1991 for Mr. & Mrs. Bridge. She was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974 for her performance in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Woodward won 2 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie: for See How She Runs as a divorced teacher who trains for a marathon; and in Do You Remember Love as a professor who begins to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. She has been nominated an additional 5 times for her roles on TV.

A popular (but untrue) bit of Hollywood lore is that Woodward was the first celebrity to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, the original 1,550 stars were created and installed as a unit in 1960; no one star was officially "first". The first star actually completed was director Stanley Kramer's. The origin of this legend is not known with certainty, but according to Johnny Grant, the long-time Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Woodward was the first celebrity to agree to pose with her star for photographers, and therefore was singled out in the collective public imagination as the first awardee.

In 1994, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman were jointly presented the Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards for Public Service.