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Joanne Woodward
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Over the years, Woodward has been a vigorous crusader for various liberal social and political causes. Her dedication to these causes has been reflected in her choice of parts, particularly her decision to play a college professor who falls victim to Alzheimer's disease in a highly praised, television movie Do You Remember Love. This particular disease is spoken of mainly in hushed tones or not discussed at all by many families of its victims, so it was quite a bold—and instructive—move for Woodward to portray the sufferings of this character. She won an Emmy for her efforts, but the greater reward came in making known some of the more confounding facts of the illness. Also along that line is her role on the big screen as the mother of a gay man (Tom Hanks) who is battling AIDS in Philadelphia. Another interesting recent role came opposite James Garner in the television movie Breathing Lessons, a sensitive comedy-drama of a longtime married couple in which she once more portrayed an offbeat, troubled middle-aged wife struggling to live a meaningful life.
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Joanne Gignilliat Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, to Elinor Trimmier and Wade Woodward in Thomasville, where her father was a school administrator. In the late 1930s the family moved to Marietta. Her mother worked at Bell Bomber, and her father became a traveling salesman. She attended Marietta High School before the family moved again, in 1945, to Greenville, South Carolina. Her older brother, Wade, would later work for Bell Bomber before becoming an architect.
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Woodward maintained a steady, albeit reduced, presence on screens large and small throughout the '90s and '00s. In "Foreign Affairs" (TNT, 1993), she was a college professor who strikes up an unlikely romance on a plane to England with a coarse and vulgar engineer from Oklahoma (Brian Dennehy). She then played a U.S. Congresswoman with aspirations for the Senate whose family is shattered when her daughter-in-law becomes addicted to cocaine in the made-for-TV drama, "Blind Spot" (CBS, 1993). Then in "Breathing Lessons" (CBS, 1994), Woodward starred opposite James Garner in this adaptation of Anne Tyler's 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a married couple who review their lives and renew their love while driving to a friend's funeral. Next she narrated "My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports" (1995), a documentary that focused on rescue missions conducted between December 1938 and August 1939 that saved almost 10,000 Jewish and other children from the fate of the concentration camps.
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From the very start of her career, Woodward displayed versatility. She could play a suburbanite (No Down Payment and Rally 'round the Flag, Boys!), a dissatisfied Southern belle (The Long, Hot Summer), a spinster (Rachel, Rachel), or the title role in The Stripper (which originally was meant for Marilyn Monroe). What gives unity to her portrayals is the spirit and spunk with which she endows the characters. It should be noted that Woodward started acting in movies at a time when it was fashionable for female characters to be glamorous and almost altogether helpless. Woodward, a pretty blond who never really bespoke glamour, usually was cast as women who were discontent, "causey" or more seriously rebellious, or were fated to cope with the unfortunate lot they had been dealt.
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Since returning to the small screen in 1971 in the NBC "Hallmark Hall of Fame" production of "All the Way Home", Woodward has found rewarding roles in drama specials and TV-movies. She was outstanding as a compassionate psychiatrist helping a woman with 16 personalities in the 1976 Emmy-winning miniseries "Sybil". "Crisis at Central High" (CBS, 1981) cast Woodward as a real-life teacher who bore witness to the tribulations of racial desegregation in 1950s Arkansas while "Breathing Lessons" (CBS, 1994) paired her to good effect with James Garner as a married couple dealing with problems in their relationship while on a cross-country trip. Her zestful energy and her propensity to play characters striving for self-expression were channeled into ideal, Emmy-winning roles in "See How She Runs" (1978), as a middle-aged woman who takes up marathon running, and "Do You Remember Love" (1985), as a poet fighting against the effects of Alzheimer's disease. Woodward was ... regularly seen from 1986 to 1988 hosting operas on PBS' "Live at the Met", and won another Emmy as co-producer of the "American Masters" presentation, "Broadway Dreamers: The Legacy of the Group Theater" (PBS, 1989).
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In only her third film appearance Woodward managed to capture Hollywood's top acting prize for her sensitive rendering of a disturbed woman with three separate personalities. Woodward impressed viewers with her distinct and vivid characterizations of Eve White, a drab housewife; Eve Black, a promiscuous sexpot; and Jane, a sweet girl-next-door. Based on an actual case of the disorder (the real “Eve” actually had more than three personalities), The Three Faces of Eve may represent Hollywood's first clinical look at the subject of multiple personalities, with much screen time devoted to Eve's diagnosis and (somewhat implausible) cure by psychologist Dr. Luther (Lee J. Cobb). Nineteen years later Woodward would play doctor to a woman with 16 personalities (played by future Oscar-winner Sally Field) in the television movie Sybil (1976).
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Joanne Woodward