Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, the daughter of Elinor (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward, Jr. Her middle names, "Gignilliat Trimmier", are of Huguenot origin.[4] She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of film.[4] Her mother named her after Joan Crawford.[4] She has an older brother, Wade, Jr.[5]
Attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, nine-year-old Woodward rushed into the parade of stars and sat on the lap of Laurence Olivier, star Vivien Leigh's partner. 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 he remembered.[4]
Woodward lived in Thomasville, then lived in Blakely and Thomaston before her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia, where she attended Marietta High School. She remains a supporter of Marietta High School and of the city's Strand Theater.[6]
The family moved once again to Greenville, South Carolina, when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced.[4] She attended and graduated from Greenville High School. She also performed at Greenville's Little Theater.[7]
In 1952, Woodward made her first television appearance on an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents entitled "Penny." She also auditioned for roles on the stage, becoming an understudy during the run of the William Inge drama Picnic in 1953–1954. It was there that she met her future husband Paul Newman,[4] although at that time he was still married to his first wife Jacqueline Witte.
In 1960, she costarred with Marlon Brando & Anna Magnani in "The Fugitive Kind."
Woodward's first feature film was a post-Civil WarWestern, Count Three and Pray (1955). Woodward was billed second, and played a strong-willed orphan. She was signed to a long-term contract by 20th Century Fox in January 1956.[10] For her next role, she starred in A Kiss Before Dying (1956) as an heiress pursued by a college student (Robert Wagner) who will stop at nothing to win her over.
In 1957, Woodward astounded audiences and critics alike with her performance in The Three Faces of Eve. She portrayed a woman with three distinct personalities — a southern housewife, a sexually voracious 'bad girl,' and a normal young woman — and gave each their own unique voices and gestures. For her work on the film, Woodward won an Academy Award for Best Actress. [11]
Woodward was to have co-starred with Robert Shaw in Strindberg's The Dance of Death at Lincoln Center in 1974, but withdrew from the production during rehearsals. "New York puts a pressure on you that I don't react well to, with the critics and all that," she later said. "I like to act in a relaxed atmosphere."[16]
Woodward also found critical success on the small screen. She won Emmy Awards for her work as an actress on See How She Runs (1978) and Do You Remember Love? (1985). As a producer, she won another Emmy for Broadway's dreamers: The Legacy of the Group Theater in 1990. Woodward also returned to TV to do "The 80 Yard Run" for Playhouse 90.
Partnership with Paul Newman
Woodward met Paul Newman on the set of the stage drama Picnic, in the early 1950s, and the two married on January 29, 1958, after his divorce from his first wife Jacqueline Witte was finalized.[18] Woodward was soon an Academy Award winner, winning her Oscar on March 28. Although he was nominated many times, Newman did not achieve a win until 1986.
Woodward and Newman appeared in many films together during the 1950s and '60s. The first was The Long Hot Summer (1958), followed by Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), and A New Kind of Love (1963).[14] They returned to Broadway in Baby Want a Kiss (1964), which ran for more than a hundred performances. Woodward was also directed by her husband in many projects. The first of these was Newman's directorial debut, Rachel, Rachel (1968). Husband and wife both earned Golden Globe Awards and Oscar nominations. They also acted together in Winning (1969) and WUSA (1970).
Only two months after their wedding, Woodward won her first Academy Award. Newman got his first nomination later that year, 1958, for Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. Both at the top of their game as film stars, Woodward and Newman became a celebrity power couple and were featured in countless magazines and articles for the next fifty years. Woodward's family life, she felt, deepened at the expense of her film career. She later said:
Initially, I probably had a real movie-star dream. It faded somewhere in my mid-30s, when I realized I wasn't going to be that kind of actor. It was painful. Also, I curtailed my career because of my children. Quite a bit. I resented it at the time, which was not a good way to be around the children. Paul was away on location a lot. I wouldn't go on location because of the children. I did once, and felt overwhelmed with guilt.[16]
Her final screen performance with Newman (and last appearance to date, excluding voiceover roles) was in the 2005 cable miniseries Empire Falls.
Later years
In 1990, she again appeared opposite Newman in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990), directed by James Ivory. Woodward had read this, the first of Evan S. Connell's two novels, when it was published in 1959. She hoped for many years to adapt it into a television production. Originally, she did not intend to play the character of Mrs. Bridge because she was too young. By the late 1980s, that was no longer the case.[19] One of her most acclaimed performances,[20][21] she garnered her fourth Academy Award nomination, and was selected as the year's Best Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
In the twenty-first century, Woodward moved more into production and directorial roles. She served as the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse from 2001 to 2005.[25] She was executive producer of the 2003 television production of Our Town, featuring Newman as the stage manager (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award). She and Newman also appeared in Empire Falls (2005) for TV. Woodward also recorded a reading of singer John Mellencamp's song "The Real Life" for his box set On the Rural Route 7609.[citation needed]
Woodward had the lead in Change in the Wind (2010). In 2011, she narrated the Scholastic/Weston Woods film All the World.[citation needed]
Woodward was reported to have been engaged to author Gore Vidal before she married Paul Newman.[27] However, there was no real engagement; Woodward claims that she was a beard for Vidal, who was gay.[28] Woodward shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles for a short time, and they remained friends.[27]
Woodward first met Newman at their agent's office. They were both understudies for the play Picnic in 1953. In the midst of this they starred in The Long, Hot Summer in 1957. Newman divorced his wife Jackie Witte, with whom he already had three children, and married Woodward on January 29, 1958, in Las Vegas. On March 28 of the same year, Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve. The couple remained married for 50 years until Newman's death from lung cancer on September 26, 2008.[29] Woodward has said: "He's very good-looking and very sexy and all of those things but all that goes out the window finally, and what finally is left is if you can make somebody laugh. And he sure does keep me laughing."[30] Newman attributed their relationship success to "some combination of lust and respect and patience. And determination."[31]
When Paul Newman was asked, in an interview with Playboy magazine, how he remained faithful to Woodward, Newman responded, "I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?"[32][33]
Woodward and Newman were mentors to Allison Janney, whom they had met when Janney, a Kenyon College freshman, was cast in a play that Newman directed.[35] Janney acknowledged this support in a 2018 speech.[36]
Woodward and Newman were active supporters of the Democratic Party. They were conspicuous supporters of Senator Eugene McCarthy in his unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign, attending a benefit for his campaign at Arthur's Restaurant on April 1, 1968.[37][38] Documents declassified in 2017 show that the National Security Agency had created a biographical file on Woodward as part of its monitoring of prominent US citizens whose names appeared in signals intelligence.[39]
In 1990, after working toward her bachelor's degree for more than 10 years, Woodward graduated from Sarah Lawrence College along with her daughter Clea.[4] Paul 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?"[42] In 1992, along with Newman, Woodward was awarded the Kennedy Center honors for lifetime achievement.[43]
Woodward, widowed since 2008, lived for many years in Westport, Connecticut, where she and Newman raised their daughters. She retreated from public life following a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in 2007. After this, she moved from Connecticut to Santa Monica, California, to be near her three daughters and other family members.[26]
Woodward won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie: for See How She Runs (1978), as a divorced teacher who trains for a marathon; and in Do You Remember Love? (1985), 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 (but untrue) 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".[45] The first star actually completed was director Stanley Kramer's.[46] 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.[47]
In 1994, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman were jointly presented the Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards for Public Service.[48]
^Joanne Woodward: What You See Is All You Get: A Portrait of Joanne Woodward What You See Is All You Get, Haun, Harry. Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1974: n1.
^ abcJOANNE WOODWARD HAD 'A MOVIE-STAR DREAM'
Lawson, Carol. New York Times September 17, 1981: C.19.
^TV: Joanne Woodward, 40, 'Sweet' and Running, By JOHN J. O'CONNOR. New York Times February 1, 1978: C23.
^Woodward Finds Her Forum THE ACTRESS SEES TV FILMS AS A `TEACHING TOOL' FOR TIMELY ISSUES: [Home Edition]
Granville, Kari. Los Angeles Times May 2, 1993: 6.
^Kellogg, Carolyn (January 4, 2013). "Gore Vidal says nice things about women in the new Vanity Fair". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 23, 2019. In the piece, Joanne Woodward recalls pretending to have an affair with Vidal, who was gay, as a way of placating his family and perhaps as a cover for her relationship with the not-quite-divorced Paul Newman. "We got a kick out of it," she told Balaban. "I couldn't see Gore and me getting married — oh, heavens — but we did have a great time together."