Susan Sarandon is an Academy Award-winning American actress, also known for her social and political activism on several causes.
She was born Susan Abigail Tomalin on October 4, 1946 in New York City. Her last name was taken from her then-husband, Chris Sarandon. She studied drama at the Catholic University of America, working with noted drama coach Father Gilbert Hartke. Her film debut was on the 1970 film Joe, where she played a disaffected teenager. She also appeared in the 1975 cult success The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as the sweet and naïve Janet Weiss. She also appeared alongside Robert Redford on the drama The Great Waldo Pepper, released that same year.
In 1983, she appeared in the box-office flop The Hunger. It was a controversial film, partly because of a graphic lesbian scene between her and co-star Catherine Denevue. Critics also panned the vampire film. However, her big break was in the 1988 film Biull Durham, alongside Kevin Costner, where she plays baseball groupie Annie Savoy.
Sarandon was nominated five times for an Oscar Best Actress Award: for Atlantic City, released in 1981; Thelma & Louise, released in 1991; Lorenzo’s Oil, released in 1992; and The Client, released in 1994. She won for Dead Man Walking in 1995.
Her other films include: 1998’s Twilight; 1998’s Stepmom; 1999’s Anywhere But Here; 2002’s The Banger Sisters; 2004’s Shall We Dance?, 2005’s Elizabethtown; 2005’s Romance & Cigarettes; 2007’s Enchanted; and 2008’s Speed Racer.
Susan Sarandon has also voiced different characters for films such as James and the Giant Peach, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie and Cats & Dogs, as well as television programs such as The Simpsons. She has also provided her talents as narrator of different documentaries, as well as a subject, notably in the documentary The Celluloid Closet, where she was asked about how Hollywood films depict homosexuality. In 1999, she was appointed as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
New York City, New York, USA
Attended Catholic University of America Drama School, 1964-1968. Met and married Chris Sarandon there (by priest who was head of Dept.).
Landed her first Hollywood role when her then-husband, Chris Sarandon, took her along on one of his auditions.
As co-presenters of the Academy Awards in 1993, Susan and her partner, Tim Robbins, seized a chance to bring public attention to the plight of a few hundred Haitians with Aids who had been interned in Guantanamo Bay.
Is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
Graduated from Edison High School in Edison, New Jersey where she was a cheerleader.
She keeps her Oscar in the bathroom.
Sang in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); recorded a duet with Eddie Vedder which played over the end credits of "Cradle Will Rock".
Is one of two actresses who won an Oscar for playing a nun. The first was Jennifer Jones in "The Song Of Bernadette" (1943).
Caught pneumonia after they shot the pool scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
Received the "World Lifetime Achievement Award" at the 2006 Women's World Award in New York.
Very good friends with fellow actress Julia Roberts.
Has a dog named Penny, a Pomeranian Maltese. The dog appears in the movie, Bernard and Doris (2006), playing a pet of Doris, the character she portrayed.
Won Oscar. Another 37 wins & 27 nominations.
1996: (won) Oscar
Best Actress in a Leading Role
for: Dead Man Walking (1995)
1995: (nominated)
Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role
for: The Client (1994)
1993: (nominated)
Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role
for: Lorenzo's Oil (1992)
1992: (nominated)
Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role
for: Thelma & Louise (1991)
1982: (nominated)
Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role
for: Atlantic City (1980)
I choose projects I can talk about for days because now you do publicity for as long as it took you to shoot the movie.
I feel I've always been on the outside and always on the edge of an abyss. The women I portray, and the woman I am, are ordinary but maybe find themselves in extra-ordinary cir!$#!#stances, and what they do is at great cost.
Sexuality ... is something that develops and becomes stronger and stronger the older you get... If you can continue to say yes to life and to maintain a certain generosity of spirit, you become more and more of who you are.
I think the only reason I remain an actor is that you can never quite get it right. So there is a challenge to it.
If I were 22 and trying to build a career, I don't know who'd be watching the kids as happily as I do. It takes so much to get me to break out of domestic paradise. There's hardly anything that interests me as much as my family.
On Thelma & Louise after her nomination for best actress, 1992, "I was surprised that the film struck such a primal nerve. I knew when we were filming that it would be different, unusual and hopefully entertaining. But shocking? I guess giving women the option of violence was hard for a lot of people to accept."
Spouse: Chris Sarandon (16 September 1967 - 1979)(divorced)
Partner of Tim Robbins (1988 - present) 2 children.
Has a daughter from relationship with Franco Amurri (Eva Amurri, born 1985).
Has two children by Tim Robbins, Jack Henry Robbins (b. May 1989) and Miles Robbins (b. May 1992).
Her grandmother had her mother when she was 13 years old. Her mother grew up in the care of nuns in an institute, abandoned at two.
Father was Philip Leslie Tomalin (of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry). Mother was Lenora Marie Criscione (who was born in Ragusa, Sicily).
Parents separated in 1982, after forty of marriage.
Eldest of nine children.