Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward (born February 27, 1930) is an American former actress. She made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character. Her accolades include an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She is the oldest living winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Woodward is perhaps best known for her performance as a woman with dissociative identity disorder in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Until his death in 2008, she was married for fifty years to actor Paul Newman, with whom she often collaborated either as a co-star, or as an actor in films directed or produced by him. In 1990, Woodward earned a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College at age 60, graduating alongside her daughter Clea.
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, the daughter of Elinor (née Trimmier) and Wade Woodward Sr. Her middle names, "Gignilliat Trimmier", are of Huguenot origin. She was influenced to become an actress by her mother's love of film. Her mother named her after Joan Crawford. She has an older brother, Wade, Jr.
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.
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.
The family moved once again to Greenville, South Carolina, when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced. She attended and graduated from Greenville High School. She also performed at Greenville's Little Theater.
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. There, she studied at the Actors Studio and also studied under Sanford Meisner in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.
In 1952, Woodward made her first television appearance on an episode of Robert Montgomery Presents titled "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, although at that time he was still married to his first wife, Jacqueline Witte.
Woodward appeared in many other TV drama shows such as Tales of Tomorrow, Goodyear Playhouse, Danger, The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, You Are There, The Web, The Ford Television Theatre, The Elgin Hour, Robert Montgomery Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, The Star and the Story, Omnibus, Star Tonight, and Ponds Theater.
Woodward's first feature film was a post–Civil War Western, 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. 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.
Woodward's career included TV, stage and feature film acting. In 1956 she returned to Broadway to star in The Lovers. It had only a brief run (but was later filmed as The War Lord (1965)). She also appeared on television drama shows including Philco Playhouse, The 20th Century-Fox Hour, The United States Steel Hour, General Electric Theater, Four Star Playhouse, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Kraft Theatre, The Alcoa Hour, Studio One in Hollywood, and Climax.
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 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 in a dress she sewed herself, the only Best Actress winner to date to do so.
With Woodward's credentials as a star attraction established, Fox gave her top billing in No Down Payment (1957), directed by Martin Ritt and produced by Jerry Wald. She was re-united with Ritt on another Faulkner adaptation, The Sound and the Fury (1959), with Yul Brynner. Sidney Lumet cast Woodward alongside Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind (1960), a box office disappointment. More popular was a third film with Newman, From the Terrace (1960), which Woodward later admitted to having "affection" for "because of the way I looked like Lana Turner". The couple then made Paris Blues (1961) with Ritt. For her title role in The Stripper (1963), Joanne was coached in technique by burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1966, she appeared as Mary in A Big Hand for the Little Lady, and starred alongside Sean Connery in A Fine Madness. In Rachel Rachel (1968), produced and directed by Newman, Woodward played a schoolteacher hoping for love. This film won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
In 1972, Woodward starred in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. For this performance as a single mother challenged by her daughters (one of them played by her actual daughter, Nell), she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. She then starred in the mid-life crisis drama Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), written by Stewart Stern, for which she received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
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."
Woodward supported Burt Reynolds in The End (1978), and as the '70s progressed did more television drama. She did A Christmas to Remember (1979) on TV. The decade ended with The Streets of L.A. (1979). Woodward also directed an episode of Family in 1979. For TV, she appeared in Come Back, Little Sheba (1977) with Laurence Olivier, and See How She Runs (1978). The latter won her an Emmy.
Woodward's credits in the 1980s included The Shadow Box (1980), directed by Newman, and Crisis at Central High (1981) for TV. She also returned to Broadway for Candida (1981–1982), a production directed by Michael Cristofer that was filmed in 1982. She starred in Harry & Son (1984), again directed by and co-starring Newman, and some television films, Passions (1984) and Do You Remember Love (1985). Woodward also did some screenwriting and direction at this time, for instance writing and directing a 1982 production of Shirley Jackson's story Come Along with Me; and starred in The Glass Menagerie (1987).
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.