Left handed and Warren Beatty's sister, she was born Apr. 24, 1934 in Richmond, Va., and has traveled the world in search of – herself. Her name is Shirley MacLean Beaty.
"There's no way Warren and I wouldn't become stars. It was bred into us by our parents who were in competition with each other. One was driven to believe in success. The other was afraid of it," stated MacLaine in a 1996 interview with Jody Jacobs.
Warren Beatty is now a multi-talented actor-producer-director whose line of heartbroken women are legendary. Shirley and Warren added an extra 'T' to their last names.
Their parents were Kathlyn MacLean Beaty, a drama teacher and an actress who gave up her career for family and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy at Johns Hopkins. It is from him that Shirley later in life sought the mysteries of life and inner self.
A true chorus line to success story, the kind that old movies are made of -- the star breaks a leg and the understudy steps in. In 1954 the star was Carol Haney in a Broadway performance of The Pajama Game and Shirley was the understudy. Hollywood producer, Hal Wallis, was in the audience that night. Sometimes even movies can come true.
The Trouble With Harry, a 1955 Alfred Hitchcock comedy became her first film debut and then to Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy Artists and Models (1955) followed. Playing an India princess in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and a geisha in My Geisha (1962) her roles varied.
MacLaine received her first Oscar nomination 1958 for her role in Some Came Running. Dancing is her love -- once a dancer always a dancer -- she danced in movies like Can-Can (1960) and with the man himself, Gene Kelly, in What a Way to Go! (1964).
She took risks in roles like The Children's Hour (1962), opposite Audrey Hepburn, where she played a lesbian schoolteacher.
MacLaine's education at Washington School of Ballet and Washington-Lee Ballet paid off in several Broadway roles and her current occupation on the stage in Las Vegas. Her theme song is from Sweet Charity (1969), which became a Bob Fosse Broadway musical where she played an aging chorus line girl who could still make an audience smile.
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