Susan Sarandon Biography:

Well known for her political activism as for her wide-ranging screen roles, Susan Sarandon has defied stereotyping in her career and her private life. The matured actress's face shows the force and reliability while the ferocious aptitude in her large, bright, hazel eyes remains as bright as ever, her unique talents of brains, beauty, resolve and conscience making her more in demand past the age of 50 than ever before. The former Ford model has shown significant range and boldness in accepting her acting roles. 

After debuting as the doomed hippie daughter in "Joe" (1970) and adding to her resume with "Lovin' Molly" and Billy Wilder's bad remake of "The Front Page" (both 1974) and the female lead opposite Robert Redford in George Roy Hill's "The Great Waldo Pepper" (1975), Sarandon gained notice  in the cult hit "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (also 1975). As one half of the "straight" couple who find themselves marooned among Transylvanian sexual weirdoes, she spoofed all the women she had played, showing "the bitch" under the sweet exterior. 

Released the same year that her husband Chris Sarandon won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role of a pre-operative transsexual in "Dog Day Afternoon", it allowed for more controversial roles like the hooker mother of a 12-year-old prostitute (Brooke Shields) in Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby" (1978) and the lesbian lover of vampire Catherine Deneuve in Tony Scott's "The Hunger" (1983). She then earned her first Best Actress Oscar nomination for Malle's "Atlantic City" starring Burt Lancaster (1980), the now famous scene in which she bathed her breasts in lemon leaving an permanent mark of sex on her.

Making her television introduction in the ABC daytime drama "A World Apart" (1970-71), Sarandon then appeared in numerous television movies and miniseries, including "June Moon" (PBS, 1974), "Who Am I This Time?" (PBS, 1982), based on a story by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the ancient Roman miniseries "A.D." (NBC, 1985) and "Women of Valor" (CBS, 1986), playing a hostage Army nurse). She has lent her voice talents and presence to many documentaries, narrating or appearing in "Your Water, Your Life" (PBS, 1988), "Postpartum: Beyond the Blues" (Lifetime, 1989), "Living in America" (VH-1, 1991, about censorship, "From Fury to Forgiveness" (The Discovery Channel, 1994, "One Woman, One Vote" (PBS, 1995, about the suffragette movement) and "Secrets of the Humpback Whale" (The Discovery Channel, 1998). 

On a funnier side, she portrayed Bitsy in "Sesame Street's All-Star 25th Birthday: Stars and Street Forever!" (ABC, 1995) and lent her voice to the Ballet Teacher for a 1995 episode of "The Simpsons" (Fox). She also starred as a woman taken hostage in a bank robbery in the 1999 HBO movie "Earthly Possessions", based on the book by Anne Tyler. For her 2001 guest appearance as a soap opera diva in an episode of the NBC sitcom "Friends", Sarandon received an Emmy nomination.

Initially offered the meatier role that Cher would play in "The Witches of Eastwick" starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfieffer (1987), Sarandon took a smaller role. She then appeared in a career saving role in "Bull Durham" with Kevin Costner, the 1988 comedy which introduced her to Tim Robbins, a part which took an amazing amount of talent plus good legs. Next up were a variety of bigy paydays for films like "Sweet Hearts Dance" (1988), "The January Man" and "A Dry White Season" (both 1989) and "White Palace" (1990), which again utilized her sexy older woman appeal. Sarandon finally earned her second Oscar nomination for Ridley Scott's female outlaw movie "Thelma & Louise" starring Brad Pitt (1991), grabbing a whole new generation of young fans as the level headed Louise opposite Geena Davis' more unpredictable Thelma.

Sarandon appeared in the drama "Light Sleeper" and added guest appearances to Robert Altman's "The Player" and Tim Robbins' directing debut, "Bob Roberts", before hitting pay-dirt again in "Lorenzo's Oil" (all 1992). Her compound performance as a mother whose incompetent devotion to her stricken son turns her into a uncaring, self-righteous mother won her another Academy Award nomination. Joel Schumacher gave her large amounts of creative input in "The Client" (1994), a sharp legal thriller adapted from the John Grisham bestseller. Though she sparred with Tommy Lee Jones, Sarandon's true leading man was talented young teen actor Brad Renfro as the endangered main character whom she serves and protects as his blemished, untested, yet smart lawyer. For her efforts Sarandon received a fourth Oscar nomination as Best Actress the same year she played the mother of large families in "Safe Passage" with Nick Stahl, and "Little Women" featuring a young Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, and Christian Bale (both 1994).

Playing advocate Sister Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking", Sarandon wore little makeup and had a bad haircut as the Louisiana nun who acts as spiritual counselor to death row killer Sean Penn, trying to save his soul.  Audiences and critics both responded passionately to her solid performance, and the Best Actress award was finally hers to take home. 

After lending her voice a the seductive Polish spider in the animated comedy-drama "James and the Giant Peach" (1996), she leaped at the opportunity to wear sexy clothing and makeup for Robert Benton's "Twilight" (1998), eager to play a character that was shocking and mysterious. Sarandon gave up glamour for grit, allowing Julia Roberts to overshadow her in Chris Columbus' "Stepmom" (1998). She then starred in Wayne Wang's "Anywhere But Here" starring Natalie Portman (1999) as another mother dealing with a new love and a unruly teen girl before working again with Tim Robbins for "The Cradle Will Rock" featuring Jack Black, Hank Azaria, Bill Murray and Vanessa Redgrave (1999).

The new millennium saw her work in numerous roles. She provided her voice talents for a pair of animated features, "Rugrats in Paris - The Movie" (2000) and "Cats & Dogs" starring Jeff Goldblum (2001). Working next to Goldie Hawn, Sarandon played a former rock groupie in "The Banger Sisters" (2002). She then was hired and cast as the title character's mother in "Igby Goes Down" starring Kieran Culkin and Claire Danes (2002) and starred with Dustin Hoffman as a married couple who take in their deceased daughter's fiancé in "Moonlight Mile" with Jake Gyllenhaal (2002). 

Susan Sarandon provided the right amount of sadness as Richard Gere's wife in "Shall We Dance?" with Jennifer Lopez (2004), anxious that her husband's new obsession with dance classes point something more ominous for their wandering marriage; that same year she appeared as one of Jude Law's large selections of romantic lovers in the remake "Alfie," portraying Liz, a successful businesswoman with a fresh no-nonsense approach to sex and being naked. More television work followed with Susan starring in the Court T.V. networks "The Exonerated" (2005), the story of six wrongly convicted people whose death row sentence was ultimately overturned by the hard work of dedicated lawyers. 

Susan then worked with writer-director Cameron Crowe to play Orlando Bloom's mother, whose sadness over the sudden loss of her husband is shown by her seemingly endless succession of new, distracting hobbies, in the romantic comedy "Elizabethtown" featuring Kirsten Dunst and Jessica Biel (2005). "Elizabethtown" gave Susan one of the most alternately poignant, funny and memorable single scenes of her career as her character delivers a highly unusual eulogy at her husband's memorial. She next starred as an evil queen attempting to keep a princess from finding her true love in Manhattan in Disney's animation and live-action fairy tale, "Enchanted" working with Patrick Dempsey.

In 2008, Sarandon starred in the John Stockwell comedy-drama "Middle Of Nowhere" (2008), about an irresponsible mother who blows her eldest daughter's college fund on her youngest daughter's modeling campaign. Then she worked alongside John Goodman in the thriller-adventure "Speed Racer" (2008) about a man named Speed Racer, who is a young man with natural racing instincts whose goal is to win The Crucible, a cross-country car racing rally that took the life of his older brother, Rex Racer. 

In 2009 she starred in the Peter Jackson horror-drama "The Lovely Bones" starring Mark Wahlberg about a young girl who was brutally raped and murdered, and watches the effects of her death on her family from Heaven, as her parents drift apart, her father becomes obsessed with vengeance and her sister grows into the woman she would never be. Also in 2009 was "The Colossus" with Colin Firth about an ornithologist at the turn of the 20th century who transports hundreds of songbirds to an ailing prime minister in South Africa and falls for a political activist trying to stop the impending Boer War.

Susan Sarandon displayed her "activism" blood and rose to the occasion at the 1993 Academy Awards, enlightening some and irritating others when she took 28 seconds to speak on behalf of Haitian refugees with AIDS. Not interested in fame for its own sake, Sarandon uses her celebrity to promote a wide variety of progressive causes saying, "I see how my life and the lives of my kids are connected to the outside world. How can you not participate in the world you live in?" 

• Also Credited As:
  Susan Abigail Tomalin
• Born:
  on 10/04/1946 in Jackson Heights, New York
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Model, Producer

Family

• Brother: Terry Tomalin.
• Daughter: Eva Amurri. Born March 15, 1985; father, Franco Amurri; made screen debut in small role in "Dead Man Walking" (1995); played opposite mother in "The Banger Sisters" (2002)
• Father: Phillip Leslie Tomalin.
• Mother: Lenora Marie Tomalin.
• Son: Jack Henry Robbins. Born May 1989; father, Tim Robbins; godfather, Ron Shelton
• Son: Miles Guthrie Robbins. Born May 5 1992; father, Tim Robbins; godfathers are Gore Vidal and Robert Altman

Significant Others

• Companion: Franco Amurri. father of Sarandon's daughter
• Companion: Louis Malle. had two-year relationship in the late 1970s; directed Sarandon in "Pretty Baby" (1978) and "Atlantic City" (1980)
• Companion: Sean Penn. together briefly in 1984
• Companion: Tim Robbins. met on the set of "Bull Durham" (1988); have two sons together; directed her in "Bob Roberts" (1992) "Dead Man Walking" (1995) and "The Cradle Will Rock" (1999)

Education

• Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, drama and English, BA, 1968

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