Simply by growing old gracefully, actress Susan Sarandon has defied the
rules of Hollywood stardom: not only does her fame continue to increase as
she entered middle age, but the quality of her films and her performances
in them has improved as well. Ultimately, she has come to embody an
all-too-rare movie type -- the strong and sexy older woman. Born Susan
Tomaling on October 4, 1946 in New York City, she was the oldest of nine
children. Even while attending the Catholic University of America, she did
not study acting, and in fact expressed no interest in performing until
after marrying actor Chris Sarandon. While accompanying her husband on an
audition, Sarandon landed a pivotal role in the controversial 1970 feature
Joe, and suddenly her own career as an actress was well underway. She soon
became a regular on the daytime soap opera A World Apart and in 1972
appeared in the feature Mortadella. Lovin' Molly and The Front Page
followed in 1974 before Sarandon earned cult immortality as Janet Weiss in
1975's camp classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the quintessential
midnight movie of its era. After starring with Robert Redford in 1975's
The Great Waldo Pepper, Sarandon struggled during the mid-1970s in a
number of little-seen projects, including 1976's The Great Smokey
Roadblock and 1978's Checkered Flag or Crash. Upon beginning a
relationship with the famed filmmaker Louis Malle, however, her career
took a turn for the better as she starred in the provocative Pretty Baby,
portraying the prostitute mother of a 12-year-old Brooke Shields. Sarandon
and Malle next teamed for 1980's superb Atlantic City, for which she
earned her first Oscar nomination. After appearing in Paul Mazursky's
Tempest, she then starred in Tony Scott's controversial 1983 horror film
The Hunger, playing a scientist seduced by a vampire portrayed by
Catherine Deneuve. The black comedy Compromising Positions followed in
1985, as did the TV mini-series Mussolini and I. Women of Valor, another
mini, premiered a year later. While Sarandon had enjoyed a prolific career
virtually from the outset, stardom remained just beyond her grasp prior to
the mid-1980s. First, a prominent appearance with Jack Nicholson, Cher and
Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1986 hit The Witches of Eastwick brought her
considerable attention, and then in 1988 she delivered a breakthrough
performance in Ron Shelton's hit baseball comedy Bull Durham, which
finally made her a star, at the age of 40. More important, the film teamed
her with co-star Tim Robbins, with whom she soon began a long-term
offscreen relationship. After a starring role in the 1989 apartheid drama
A Dry White Season, Sarandon teamed with Geena Davis as Thelma and Louise,
a much-discussed distaff road movie which became among the year's biggest
hits and won both actresses Oscar nominations. Sarandon was again
nominated for 1992's Lorenzo's Oil and 1994's The Client before finally
winning her first Academy Award for 1995's Dead Man Walking, a
gut-wrenching examination of the death penalty, adapted and directed by
Robbins. Now a fully established star, Sarandon had her choice of
projects; she decided to lend her voice to Tim Burton's animated James and
the Giant Peach (1996). Two years later she was more visible with starring
roles in the thriller Twilight (starring opposite Paul Newman and Gene
Hackman) and Stepmom, a weepie co-starring Julia Roberts. The same year,
she had a supporting role in the John Turturro film Illuminata. Sarandon
continued to stay busy in 1999, starring in Anywhere But Here, which
featured her as Natalie Portman's mother, and Cradle Will Rock, Robbins'
first directorial effort since Dead Man Walking. On television, Sarandon
starred with Stephen Dorff in an adaptation of Anne Tyler's Earthly
Possessions. |