Ali MacGraw
Elizabeth Alice MacGraw is an American actress. She first gained attention with her role in the film Goodbye, Columbus, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. She gained an international profile for her role in the film Love Story, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. In 1972, MacGraw was voted the top female box office star in the world and was honored with a hands and footprints ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre after having been in just three films. She went on to star in the popular action films The Getaway and Convoy as well as the romantic sports drama Players, the comedy Just Tell Me What You Want, and the historical novel-based television miniseries The Winds of War. In 1991, she published an autobiography, Moving Pictures.
Early life
MacGraw was born in Pound Ridge, New York, the daughter of commercial artists Frances and Richard MacGraw. She has one brother, Dick, an artist. Her mother was Jewish, the daughter of emigrants from Budapest, Hungary. MacGraw's mother chose not to disclose her ancestry to her father, instead professing ignorance about it. "I think Daddy was bigoted," MacGraw has said.Her mother was considered a "pioneer" as an artist, who had taught school in Paris before settling in Greenwich Village. Her parents married when her mother was 40: "My gorgeous father: a combination of Tyrone Power and a mystery, a brilliant artist and a brain beyond brains." He was born in New Jersey with his childhood spent in an orphanage. He ran away to sea when he was 16 and studied art in Munich. MacGraw adds, "Daddy was frightened and really, really angry. He never forgave his real parents for giving him up." As an adult, he constantly suppressed the rage he built up against his parents. She described her father as "violent".
MacGraw attended Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Connecticut and Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Career
Early career
Beginning in 1960, MacGraw spent six years working at Harper's Bazaar magazine as a photographic assistant to fashion maven Diana Vreeland. She worked at Vogue magazine as a fashion model, and as a photographer's stylist. She has also worked as an interior decorator.Film and television
MacGraw began her acting career in television commercials, including one for the Polaroid Swinger camera. And in one commercial for International Paper, she was on a beach in a bikini made of Confil and went for a swim underwater to prove its strength and durability. MacGraw gained attention in the film Goodbye, Columbus, but real stardom came when she starred opposite Ryan O'Neal in Love Story, one of the highest-grossing films in U.S. history. MacGraw was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for that performance. Following Love Story, MacGraw was celebrated on the cover of Time magazine.In 1972, after appearing in just three films, she had her footprints and autograph engraved at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She then starred opposite Steve McQueen in The Getaway, which was one of the year's top ten films at the box office. Having taken a five-year break from acting, in 1978 MacGraw re-emerged in another box office hit, Convoy, opposite Kris Kristofferson. She then appeared in the films Players and Just Tell Me What You Want, directed by Sidney Lumet.
In 1983, MacGraw starred in the highly successful television miniseries The Winds of War. In 1985, MacGraw joined hit ABC prime-time soap opera Dynasty as Lady Ashley Mitchell, which, she admitted in a 2011 interview, she did for the money. She appeared in 14 episodes of the show before her character was killed off in the "Moldavian Massacre" cliffhanger episode in 1985.
Stage
MacGraw made her Broadway theatre debut in New York City in 2006 as a dysfunctional matriarch in the drama Festen.In 2016, MacGraw reunited with Love Story co-star Ryan O'Neal in a staging of A.R. Gurney's play Love Letters.
Magazine recognition
In 1991, People magazine selected MacGraw as one of its "50 Most Beautiful People" in the World.In 2008 GQ magazine listed her in their "Sexiest 25 Women in Film Ever" edition.
Yoga
Having become a Hatha Yoga devotee in her early 50s, MacGraw produced a yoga video with the American Yoga Master Erich Schiffmann, Ali MacGraw Yoga Mind and Body. The impact of this bestselling video was such that in June 2007 Vanity Fair magazine credited MacGraw with being one of the people responsible for the practice's recent popularity in the United States.Animal welfare
In July 2006, MacGraw filmed a public service announcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, urging residents to take their pets with them in the event of wildfires. In 2008, she wrote the foreword to the book Pawprints of Katrina by author Cathy Scott and photography by Clay Myers about Best Friends Animal Society and the largest pet rescue in U.S. history. MacGraw is also a U.S. Ambassador for animal welfare charity Animals Asia. An animal rights advocate throughout her life, she received the Humane Education Award by Animal Protection of New Mexico for speaking out about animal issues.Personal life
MacGraw has acknowledged having had an abortion in her early 20s, at a time when the procedure was illegal. In 1979, MacGraw's mother, who was 38 when she had her, revealed that she had an abortion of her own in the early 1920s.After college, MacGraw married Robin Hoen, a Harvard-educated banker, after dating for five years, but they divorced after a year and a half.
On October 24, 1969, MacGraw married film producer Robert Evans ; their son, Josh Evans, is an actor, director, producer and screenwriter. They divorced in 1972 after she became involved in a public affair with Steve McQueen on the set of The Getaway. She married McQueen on July 13, 1973, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and divorced him in 1978.
In the 40-plus years since her last divorce, MacGraw has not remarried. She dated Warren Beatty, Rick Danko, Bill Hudson, Ronald Meyer, Rod Stryker, Fran Tarkenton, Peter Weller and Henry Wolf.
MacGraw's autobiography, Moving Pictures, revealed her struggles with alcohol and sex addiction. She was treated for the former at the Betty Ford Center.
When former husband Evans received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002, she accompanied him. Their grandson Jackson was born in December 2010 to Josh and his wife, singer Roxy Saint. After Evans' 2019 death, MacGraw told The Hollywood Reporter, "Our son, Joshua, and I will miss Bob tremendously, and we are so very proud of his enormous contribution to the film Industry." During the last four decades of his life, MacGraw had been a good friend to Evans over the previous 40 years, Evans told Vanity Fair in 2010.
Since 1994, MacGraw has lived in Tesuque, New Mexico, after "fleeing Malibu" when a house she was renting was destroyed by a fire. MacGraw was originally intended to make a cameo as herself in the Breaking Bad episode "Grey Matter" as a guest at character Elliott Schwartz's birthday, set in Santa Fe, but her appearance didn't make the final cut of the episode.