Born February 27, 1930 to Wade and Elinor Woodward, Joanne Woodward was named after Joan Crawford by her avid movie fan mother. When she was 9, her mother took her to the world premiere of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta. When Vivien Leigh exited her limo, young Woodward jumped in the car and sat in her husband Laurence Olivier’s lap without warning. Years later she would star opposite Olivier in a TV version of Come Back, Little Sheba.

A beauty contest winner on her road to stardom, Woodward’s goals were to marry a movie star, have beautiful babies and win an Oscar, all of which she did. She met future husband Paul Newman in 1953, married him in January, 1958, two months before winning her Oscar for her first starring role as a woman with multiple personalities in The Three Faces of Eve.

Woodward followed he Oscar winning role with such hits as 1957’s No Down Payment; 1958’s The Long, Hot Summer; 1959’s The Fugitive Kind; 1960’s From the Terrace and 1963’s The Stripper in which she replaced Marilyn Monroe, but did not reecive another Oscar nomination until 1968’s Rachel, Rachel, directed by her husband.

The actress won further acclaim for 1972’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds and a third Oscar nomination for the following year’s Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. She would turn to TV for opportunities not generally available to actresses of a certain age, receiving Emmy nominations for 1976’s Sybil in which she played the psychiatrist of a woman with a dozen or more multiple personalities played by Sally Field; 1978’s See How She Runs and 1981’s Crisis at Central High before winning for 1985’s Do You Remember Love in which she played an English professor afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease opposite Richard Kiley.

Back on the big screen, she won acclaim for 1987’s The Glass Menagerie and a fourth Oscar nomination for 1990’s Mr. & Mrs. Bridge. That same year she received her fifth and sixth Emmy nominations for an American Masters program on the Group Theatre. Woodward won for producing the informational program. She would be nominated three more times for acting in 1993’s Blind Spot; 1993’s Breathing Lessons and 2005’s Empire Falls.

1993 proved to be a busy year for the actress. In addition to Blind Spot, she starred in the TV movie Foreign Affairs and on the big screen was Tom Hanks’ mother in Philadelphia and narrator of Martin Scorsese’s film of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence.

Joanne Woodward has largely been out of the public eye since the death of Paul Newman, her husband of fifty years, in 2008, but has done some film voice work in recent years. She will be 84 next month.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE THREE FACES OF EVE (1957), directed by Nunnally Johnson

Based on a popular best seller about a real-life woman with multiple personalities, the film was a huge hit in its day. Unfortunately it is a very static film that doesn’t hold up very well except for Woodward’s mesmerizing performance. Neither David Wayne as her perplexed husband nor Lee J. Cobb as her bemused psychiatrist do anything to distinguish themselves.

A much better take on the subject is the 1976 mini-series Sybil for which Woodward earned an Emmy nomination as the shrink and Sally Field an Emmy and career boost as a woman with at least a dozen different personalities.

RACHEL, RACHEL (1968), directed by Paul Newman

Woodward gives perhaps her finest performance as a small-town schoolteacher yearning for a better life in this poignant character study sensitively directed by Newman.

Woodward and Newman both won New York Film Critics’ awards for their work and Woodward an Oscar nomination for her performance, but she was upset that Newman failed to receive a nomination as well.

SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS (1973), directed by Gilbert Cates

Woodward delivers another sensitive performance, this time as a rather unlikeable woman who alienates everyone around her including husband Martin Balsam and mother Sylvia Sidney whose death scene in a theatre during a showing of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries was one of the film’s two most talked about scenes.

The other was the one in which Woodward reacts badly to finding her teenage son with another boy.

MR. & MRS. BRIDGE (1990), directed by James Ivory

Based on two books by Evan S. Connell, which tell basically the same story from the points of view of the husband and the wife, the film wisely concentrates on the wife’s more sensitive telling.

Woodward’s stellar portrayal of the wife and mother was her last opportunity on screen to date to play a full-fledged character throughout the course of a film. The scene at her son’s graduation and the final scene were alone worthy of Oscar consideration.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS (1993), directed by Jim O’Brien

Woodward plays a college professor on a sojourn in England where is researching a book she is writing. She has an unlikely affair with a recently retired civil engineer from Arkansas, played by Brian Dennehy, while her young assistant, Eric Stoltz, has an affair with an older Englishwoman played by Stephanie Beecham.

The Woodward-Dennehy romance is the focus with both stars acquitting themselves well. Recently released on DVD by Warner Archive, it is currently the easiest to find of Woodward’s many TV movies of which more should be made available.

JOANNE WOODWARD AND OSCAR

• The Three Faces of Eve (1957) – Oscar -Best Actress
• Rachel, Rachel (1968) – Nominated Best Actress
• Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973) – Nominated Best Actress
• Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) – Nominated Best Actress