Curated playlist
American stage actresses
- Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn won four Academy Awards for Best Actress, a record no one else has matched. She wore trousers before women commonly did. She refused autographs, shunned the publicity machine, and once wrestled a camera from a…
- Meryl StreepMeryl Streep walked into a casting meeting with Dino De Laurentiis in 1976, hoping to audition for his King Kong remake. De Laurentiis looked at her and said, in Italian, to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" What he…
- Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, in a family home called Heathwood. She died on the 23rd of March 2011 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Between those two…
- Gwyneth PaltrowGwyneth Kate Paltrow was born on the 27th of September 1972 into a family already at home in Hollywood: her mother, Blythe Danner, was a stage and screen actress; her father, Bruce Paltrow, a film producer and director. By the time she was…
- Judy GarlandJudy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on the 10th of June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to a family that lived and breathed performance. Her parents were vaudevillians who ran a movie theater. Her first appearance on any stage came…
- Bette DavisBette Davis died on the 6th of October, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, too weak to make the journey home after her cancer returned during a visit to Spain. Her tombstone reads: "She did it the hard way." That…
- Ginger RogersGinger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath on the 16th of July, 1911, in Independence, Missouri, and she would become one of the most celebrated performers in the history of American cinema. By the time she died in 1995, she had made…
- Natalie PortmanNatalie Portman was born on the 9th of June 1981, in Jerusalem, at Hadassah Medical Center. She has spent most of her life navigating two worlds: the concentrated pressures of global stardom and the layered complexities of her…
- Marisa TomeiMarisa Tomei walked onto the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the 29th of March, 1993, and heard her name called as the winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had beaten out Miranda Richardson, Joan…
- Scarlett JohanssonScarlett Johansson was born on the 22nd of November 1984 in the Manhattan borough of New York City, and by the time she was nine years old she had already appeared on national television. What followed was a career that would make her the…
- Carrie FisherCarrie Frances Fisher once wrote that no matter how she died, she wanted it reported that she had drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra. After her death in December 2016, several news outlets honored the request. That single line…
- Julia Louis-DreyfusJulia Louis-Dreyfus has won more Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer in the history of television. That record belongs to a woman who first caught the attention of Saturday Night Live producers not on a major…
- Lupita Nyong'oLupita Amondi Nyong'o was born on the 1st of March 1983 in Mexico City, the daughter of a Kenyan political science lecturer and a woman who would one day lead the Africa Cancer Foundation. Her family had fled Kenya three years earlier…
- Deborah Ann WollDeborah Ann Woll was born on the 7th of February 1985 in Brooklyn, New York, and she has spent her career crossing boundaries that most performers would treat as fixed. She trained at the USC School of Theatre, earned her Bachelor of Fine…
- Diana RossDiana Ross was born on the 26th of March 1944, and her very name was an accident. Her mother intended to call her Diane, but whoever filled out the birth certificate made a mistake, and the name Diana stuck on paper. Her family and every…