Goldie (Jean) Hawn
(b. 1945, Washington DC, USA)
'Dizzy blonde' actress who worked as a professional dancer before finding fame in the 1960s TV comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Her feature film debut came in 1968 with a small part in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band and in the following year she appeared alongside Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman in Cactus Flower, winning both an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. A busy film career followed, with successful comedy roles in There's a Girl in My Soup (1970), Shampoo (1975) and Private Benjamin (1980), for which she received a second Oscar nomination. Her latest film was The Banger Sisters (2002).
Books:
Goldie Hawn, A Lotus Grows in the Mud (Putnam Adult, 2005)
Marc Shapiro, Pure Goldie: The Life and Career of Goldie Hawn (Citadel, 1998)
Patricia Costello, Female Fitness Stars of TV and the Movies (Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2000)
Barbra Streisand (Barbara Joan Streisand)
(b. 1942, New York, NY, USA)
Musical stage and film actress, singer and entertainer. Her first lead role was in the Broadway show Funny Girl in 1964, which she repeated in the 1968 film version to win an Oscar for Best Actress. She has been the recipient of many Emmy and Grammy Awards. She is also a filmmaker and major film producer.
Official Barbra Streisand Website
Books:
Christopher Andersen, Barbra: The Way She Is (Harper Paperbacks, 2007)
Tom Santopietro, The Importance of Being Barbra (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006)
Allison Waldman, The Barbra Streisand Scrapbook (Citadel, 2001)
Bette Midler
(b. 1945, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA)
Studied drama at the University of Hawaii and became a cabaret singer and comedienne before proving herself to be a capable actress. She appeared as Tzeitel in "Fiddler on the Roof" on Broadway in the 1960s. Her first major film role, in The Rose (1979), earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1995 she helped set up the New York Restoration Project, which works to revitalise neglected parks in poorer districts of New York City.
The Official Bette Midler Web Site
Books:
Bette Midler, Bette Midler: A View from a Broad (Fireside, 1981)
Bette Midler, Saga of Baby Divine (Crown Publishers, 1984)
Mark Bego, Bette Midler: Still Divine (Cooper Square Press, 2002)
Hermione (Ferdinanda) Gingold (b. 1897, London, England, UK; d. 1987, New York, NY, USA)
Popular English actress who enjoyed a long stage career in London and on Broadway before being invited to Holywood. Her film performances engaged her uniquely charming and eccentric persona to good effect, particulaly in The Music Man (1962), A Little Night Music (1977) and Gigi (1958), for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
More On Hermione Gingold
Books:
Hermione Gingold, How to Grow Old Disgracefully (St Martins Press, 1988)
Hermione Gingold, My Own Unaided Work (Laurie, 1952)
Hermione Gingold, Sirens should be seen and not heard (Lippincott, 1963)
Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman)
(b. 1885, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; d. 1955, Los Angeles, California, USA)
Popular actress of the silent movie era and the first screen sex symbol. She worked in the theatre for a number of years before landing the lead role as the vampire in A Fool There Was (1915). Joining the newly formed Fox Studios, she made a string of successful films, mostly in costume roles such as Cleopatra (1917), Camille (1917), The Soul of Buddha (1918) and Salome (1918). Although she made more than 40 feature films, complete prints of only a few of these remain.
Books:
Eve Golden, Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara (Vestal Press, 1997)
Ronald Genini, Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, With a Filmography (McFarland & Company, 2001)
Serge Normant, Bridget Foley, and Michael Thompson, Femme Fatale: Famous Beauties Then and Now (Studio, 2001)
Rosanna (Lauren) Arquette
(b. 1959, New York, NY, USA)
Influenced by her mother, an actress and acting teacher, she made her theatre debut in 1977 and soon moved into television and film. In 1982, she received an Emmy Award nomination for the TV film The Executioner's Song and her movie lead debut came in 1983 with Baby, It's You. Her star performance in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) earned her a BAFTA Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination. She abandoned Hollywood temporarily in the late 1980s to live and work in Europe. In 1994 she gave one of her best performances in Quentin Tarantino's offbeat Pulp Fiction. More recently her interests have extended into directing and producing. Her younger siblings, Patricia Arquette and David Arquette, are also well-known actors.
Books:
Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (Miramax, 1994)
Roger Ebert, The Great Movies (Broadway, 2003)
Piper Laurie (Rosetta Jacobs)
(b. 1932, Detroit, Michigan, USA)
Stage, television and movie actress who was given her first film part at the age of 17. Roles in several minor films followed in the 1950s but it was not until she played Paul Newman's girlfriend in The Hustler (1961) that she came to the public's attention. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actresss. After a hiatus in her career she returned in the box office hit Carrie (1976) and received a second Oscar nomination. Many film and television appearances followed, establishing her as a talented and versatile actress. In 1987 she won both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for her acting in the TV movie Promise.
The Piper Laurie Shrine
Books:
Lee Pfeiffer, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Classic Movies (Alpha, 2006)
Tony Magistrale, Hollywood's Stephen King (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
Peter Gavrilovich and Bill McGraw, The Detroit Almanac (Detroit Free Press, 2006)
Shelley Winters (Shirley Schrift)
(b. 1920, St. Louis, Missouri, USA; d. 2006, Beverly Hills, California, USA)
Film and television actress remembered as much for her well publicised off-screen liaisons with famous stars as for her on-screen roles. She started out as a movie starlet but progressed to become a respected supporting actress in a long career lasting over six decades. She received four Academy Award nominations, with wins in 1959 for The Diary of Anne Frank and 1965 for A Patch of Blue.
Books:
Shelley Winters, Shelley Also Known As Shirley (Ballantine Books, 1981)
Shelley Winters, Shelley II: The Middle of My Century (Random House Value Publishing, 1991)
James Robert Parish, The Hollywood Book of Scandals : The Shocking, Often Disgraceful Deeds and Affairs of Over 100 American Movie and TV Idols (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
Natalie Portman (Natalie Hershlag)
(b. 1981, Jerusalem, Israel)
Moved as a three-year-old with her parents to the US from Israel. She appeared in films and on Broadway while still a teenager but took a four year break in 1999 to study for a degree in psychology at Harvard University. She has since pursued a successful film career, giving well-received performances in Closer (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), My Blueberry Nights (2007) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In addition to an Oscar nomination, she has received BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards for Best Supporting Actress. Away from the screen she is an animal rights advocate and has been a vegetarian since childhood.
Books:
James L. Dickerson, Natalie Portman: Queen of Hearts (ECW Press, 2002)
Trish Biggar, Natalie Portman (Introduction), Dressing a Galaxy: The Costumes of Star Wars (Harry N. Abrams, 2005)
This page was last modified on 22 Apr 2008