Susan Sarandon Having been in show business, mostly the film industry, for more than thirty-five years, the stunning sixty year old redheaded actress Susan Sarandon is certainly a veteran in her field. She’s taken on roles ranging from an engaged woman entangled with a transvestite, a waitress who kills a rapist, a nun comforting a killer on death row, a terminally ill divorcee, Mussolini’s mistress, an ex-rock groupie, and more. Susan Sarandon was born on October 4, 1946, as Susan Abigail Tomalin into a large Catholic family in New York City. After high school, Sarandon went on to study drama at the Catholic University of America from 1964 to 1968, where she received her BA. The following year, Sarandon landed her debut performance in the 1970 flick Joe, a leading role alongside Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Audrey Caire. She received this role after attending auditions with her then-husband Chris Sarandon, whom she divorced in 1979. But she didn’t gain international fame until her role in 1975’s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, co-starring Tim Curry as the transvestite Dr. Frank N. Furter, with whom Sarandon’s character Janet gets entangled. The movie also starred Barry Bostwick, Richard O’Brien, and Patricia Quinn. Also that year, Sarandon starred in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford.
It was another wait, this time thirteen years, before Sarandon was able to snag a big-screen role she really wanted—as Annie in 1988's acclaimed Bull Durham, opposite Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins, with whom she began a romance. Sarandon and Robbins married and had two sons, after Sarandon made the decision to only accept truly interesting and challenging roles. One of these roles was in the 1991 hit Thelma and Louise, as a bored waitress who suddenly takes off with her housewife friend, played by Geena Davis, and later kills a man who threatens to rape her friend. Sarandon ended up with four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s, and finally won Best Actress for her role in 1995’s Dead Man Walking, directed by Robbins and also starring Sean Penn. Since Dead Man Walking, Sarandon has been featured in the films Stepmom (1998), with Julia Roberts, Ed Harris, and Jena Malone; Cradle Will Rock (1999), with Hank Azaria, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, and Cary Elwes; The Banger Sisters (2002), opposite Goldie Hawn; Shall We Dance (2004), with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez; Alfie (2004), starring Jude Law as the ultimate womanizer; and in 2005, Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst; and Romance & Cigarettes, a down-and-dirty musical, co-starring James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, and Steve Buscemi.
Sarandon has two sons with her partner Robbins, born in 1989 and 1992, and also bore a daughter, actress Eva Amurri, in 1985, with actor Franco Amurri, her boyfriend at the time. YUDDY |
