JOANNE WOODWARD

Joanne Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia in 1930. She won beauty pageants as a teen, and then went to college and majored in drama, and then moved to New York where she got some parts on TV and Broadway. She was an understudy in the Broadway version of Picnic, and Paul Newman was also an understudy, and although he was married with children, a romance began. Although he had started in movies a year before she did, her career took off before his, with her winning the Best Actress Academy Award for The Three Faces of Eve in 1957. The following year Newman divorced his wife and married Woodward, and the next year she had the first of their three children together. She continued to work steadily throughout the years, in movies, on stage, and on TV, sometimes with her husband. Some of her most memorable performances were in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), Rachel, Rachel (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), Summer Wishes Winter Dreams (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds in 1972 (where her real-life daughter Nell Potts co-starred with her) and in both she was directed by her husband. Woodward and Newman lived in Westport, Connecticut for many years, and lived very private lives, and of course did wonderful charitable work. Somehow Woodward managed to have a show business career, a stable marriage and family life and be socially conscious and charitable, all at the same time! It is something few other celebrities have ever managed to achieve. As of 2021, she is still alive at the age of 91. She is currently suffering from Alzheimer's, and cared for by her daughters.