Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress and producer. She is perhaps
best known for her Academy Award-winning role in The Three Faces of Eve.
Early life Woodward was born in Thomasville, Georgia,
daughter of Elinor and Wade Woodward, Jr., who at one point was vice president of publisher
Charles Scribner's Sons. Her middle names, "Gignilliat Trimmier", are of Huguenot origin.
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 partner and future
husband. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977, in a television production of Come
Back, Little Sheba. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him and he told
her that he remembered her doing it. Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was
in the second grade when her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia, where she attended Marietta
High School. She remains a booster of Marietta High and of that city's Strand Theater. 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 appeared in theatrical productions at Greenville High
and in Greenville's Little Theatre, playing Laura Wingfield in their staging of The Glass
Menagerie directed by Robert Hemphill McLane. She returned to Greenville in 1976 to play
Amanda Wingfield in another Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie. She had
also returned in 1955 for the premiére of her debut movie, Count Three And Pray, at
the Paris Theatre on North Main Street. Woodward 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. Career
Early career
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 1957 Academy Award for Best Actress.
Films with Paul Newman She appeared with husband Paul Newman in ten
featured films: The Long, Hot Summer
Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! From the Terrace
Paris Blues A New Kind of Love
Winning WUSA
The Drowning Pool Harry & Son—(directed by Newman)
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge Both appeared in the HBO miniseries Empire
Falls but had no scenes together. She starred in five films that Newman directed
or produced but in which he did not star: Rachel, Rachel
They Might Be Giants The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds—which featured their daughter, Nell Potts
The Shadow Box—(television movie) The Glass Menagerie
Later career
Woodward has continued to act, in such films as Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams opposite Martin
Balsam, and Philadelphia in which she played the mother to Tom Hanks' character, and in
television. She 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. Woodward was a co-producer and starred in
a 1993 broadcast of the play Blind Spot, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award
for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie. She was executive producer of
the 2003 television production of Our Town, featuring Newman as the stage manager She
wrote the teleplay and directed a 1982 production of Shirley Jackson's story Come Along with
Me, for which husband Newman provided the voice of the character Hughie under the screen
name of P. L. Neuman. Woodward is the artistic director of the Westport
Country Playhouse. She recorded a reading of singer John Mellencamp's
song "The Real Life" for his box set On the Rural Route 7609. In 2011 she narrated the
Scholastic/Weston Woods film All the World. Personal life
Woodward was reported to have been engaged to author Gore Vidal prior to marrying Paul
Newman. However, there was no real engagement: Vidal later claimed it was a stunt to attract
Newman's attention. Woodward shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles for a short time
and they remained friends. Woodward met Newman in 1953. They later reconnected
on the set of The Long Hot Summer in 1957. Newman married Woodward on February 2, 1958,
in Las Vegas. On March 28 of the same year, Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
The couple remained married for 50 years until Newman's death from lung cancer on September
26, 2008.
Woodward and Newman had three daughters: Elinor Teresa, known on screen as Nell Potts and
generally as Nell Newman, Melissa "Lissy" Stewart, and Claire "Clea" Olivia Newman.
They also have two grandsons, by Lissy. In 1990, Woodward graduated from Sarah Lawrence
College with her daughter Clea. Newman delivered the commencement address, during which he
said he dreamed that a woman had asked, "How dare you accept this invitation to give the
commencement address when you are merely hanging on to the coattails of the accomplishments
of your wife?" In 1988, Newman and Woodward established the
Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, named for the outlaws in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid. Located in Ashford, Connecticut, the camp provides services to 20,000 seriously
ill children and families free of charge. Woodward continues to live in Westport, Connecticut.
Filmography Awards
In 1958, Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve. She
was nominated for Best Actress in 1969 for Rachel, Rachel, in 1974 for Summer Wishes,
Winter Dreams, and in 1991 for Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. She was named Best Actress at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1974 for her performance in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds. Woodward won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie, for See How She Runs as a divorced teacher
who trains for a marathon, and in Do You Remember Love? as a professor who begins to suffer
from Alzheimer's disease. She has been nominated an additional five times for her roles on
television. A popular bit of Hollywood lore is that Woodward
was the first celebrity to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In fact, the
original 1,550 stars were created and installed as a unit in 1960; no one star was officially
"first." The first star actually completed was director Stanley Kramer's. The origin
of this legend is not known with certainty; but according to Johnny Grant, the long-time
Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Woodward was the first celebrity to agree to pose with
her star for photographers, and therefore was singled out in the collective public imagination
as the first awardee. In 1994, she and her husband received the
Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually
by Jefferson Awards. References
Further reading
External links Joanne Woodward at the Internet Movie Database
Joanne Woodward at Allmovie Joanne Woodward's thoughts on Earth Day 2006