JOANNE WOODWARD Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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JOANNE WOODWARD

Name: Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward                                               
Born: 27 February 1930 Thomasville, Georgia, USA                                       
                                                                                       
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an Academy Award-,     
Golden Globe-, Emmy and Cannes award-winning American actress. Woodward, who is         
married to Paul Newman, is also a television and theatrical producer.                   
                                                                                       
Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor Gignilliat (née         
Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of               
publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle name, "Gignilliat",                       
originates from distant Huguenot ancestry. She was influenced to become an             
actress by her mother's love of movies. Her mother named her after Joan                 
Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name - "Joanne". Attending           
the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed out       
into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien           
Leigh's husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1979, in a television           
production of Come Back, Little Sheba.                                                 
                                                                                       
Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was in the second grade. Her family             
relocated to Marietta, Georgia. They moved once again when she was a junior in         
high school, after her parents divorced. She graduated from Greenville High             
School in 1947, in Greenville, South Carolina. Woodward won many beauty contests       
as a teenager. She 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.                                                                             
                                                                                       
Woodward's first film was a post-Civil War western Count Three and Pray, in 1955.       
She continued to move between Hollywood and Broadway, eventually, understudying         
in the New York production of Picnic which featured Paul Newman. The two were           
married in 1958 after their work together in the film The Long, Hot Summer. By         
that time, Woodward had starred in The Three Faces of Eve, for which she won the       
Academy Award for Best Actress.                                                         
                                                                                       
Woodward has continued to act on stage, films, and television in such films as         
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams and Philadelphia (1993) in which she played the           
mother to Tom Hanks' character. She also appeared in the television films               
Sybil opposite Sally Field and Crisis at Central High. She was the narrator for         
Martin Scorsese's screen version of The Age of Innocence.                               
                                                                                       
She has produced, co-produced and directed a number of TV programs. Woodward is         
the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse.