Shirley MacLaine Portrait Treatment 2011

1. Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Shirley had very weak ankles as a child, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class. Strongly motivated by ballet throughout her youth, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like "Romeo & Juliet" and "Sleeping Beauty," being the tallest in the class, she always played the boys' role due to the absence of males in the class. She eventually got to play a respectable female role — the fairy godmother in "Cinderella." While warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but decided to dance the role all the way through. Eventually, MacLaine decided that professional ballet wasn't for her: she had grown too tall (being over 6 feet tall en pointe) and did not have the requisite "beautifully constructed feet" (high arches, high insteps). Also, she found ballet too limiting. After leaving ballet, MacLaine pursued Broadway dancing. Eventually, she turned to acting.

2. The summer before her senior year, she was in New York to try acting on Broadway with some success. After she graduated, she returned and within a year she became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; Haney broke her ankle, and MacLaine replaced her. A few months after, with Haney still out of commission, film producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience, took note of MacLaine, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures. She later sued Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that is credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.

3. MacLaine made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress.

4. MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker until they divorced in 1982. In April 2011 while promoting her new book, “I'm Over All That”, she told Oprah Winfrey that she had an open relationship with her husband.[11] They had a daughter, Sachi Parker (born 1956). Shirley shares a birthday (April 24) with her good friend, Barbra Streisand, and they traditionally spend it together each year.

5. MacLaine has serous interest in UFO that she gave numerous interviews to CNN, NBC and FOX news channels on the subject through 2007-2008. In her 2007 released book "Sage-ing While Age-ing" she mentioned about her alien encounters and witnessing of Washington DC UFO incidents in 1950s.