Shirley MacLaine Turns 90! Here Are 9 Reasons to Love This Hollywood Legend

Shirley MacLaine, one of the last living legends from Hollywood’s Golden Age, has been a mainstay on the big and small screens for coming up on seven decades. She made her acting debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, winning the Golden Globe for best new star of 1955, and she’s still appearing in new films. To celebrate her 90th birthday, on April 24, we’ve collected nine things we love about the immensely talented, always outspoken, delightfully eccentric Oscar and AARP Movies for Grownups award winner.

Getty Images

1. Broken ankles didn’t hold her back — in fact, one gave her her big break

MacLaine started dancing at 3 and studied at the Washington School of Ballet as a child. She was so tall that she was often cast in boys’ roles. When MacLaine finally landed a juicy female role, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, she broke her ankle backstage; not wanting to miss the opportunity, she simply tied her ribbons tighter and went on with the show. “I got to play the Fairy Godmother and turned the pumpkin into a coach, but I couldn’t cure my own broken ankle!” she told The Sunday Post. Another injury gave MacLaine her big break: On Broadway, she was understudying in The Pajama Game when one of the leads broke her ankle, so MacLaine was plucked from the chorus to step in. As luck would have it, Jerry Lewis and producer Hal Wallis were in the audience, and she was quickly signed to a Hollywood contract. She would dance again in Can-Can and Sweet Charity, and returned to the world of ballet in 1977’s The Turning Point.

(Left to right) Jack Nicholson, Shirley MacLaine and James L. Brooks holding their Oscars at the 56th Academy Awards.

Bill Nation/Getty Images

2. Step aside, Meryl: MacLaine’s Oscar nominations show off her great range as well

The sixth time was the charm for perennial Academy Award nominee MacLaine, who had earned four acting nominations: one for the 1958 family drama Some Came Running, two for Billy Wilder romantic comedies opposite Jack Lemmon (1960’s The Apartment and 1963’s Irma La Douce) and one for The Turning Point, plus another for codirecting the 1975 documentary The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. She finally broke through two and a half decades after her first nod, when she took home the trophy for Terms of Endearment, one of the great mother-daughter movies in Hollywood history. “I’m gonna cry because this show has been as long as my career,” she joked during her acceptance speech. “I have wondered for 26 years what this would feel like. Thank you so much for terminating the suspense.”

Don’t miss this: The Best (and Worst!) Moms in Movie History

(Clockwise from top left) Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine star in "Some Came Running."

Getty Images

3. The Rat Pack treated her like one of the guys

Nicknamed a Rat Pack “mascot,” MacLaine shared an Indiana house with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin during the 1958 filming of Some Came Running. She would later joke to Vanity Fair, “How many times did I answer the door because the cannolis had arrived by private plane from Hollywood?” MacLaine appeared in the original Ocean’s Eleven in 1960 and dotingly described the Vegas-loving crew as “primitive children who would put crackers in each other’s beds and dump spaghetti on new tuxedos.” She remained “one of the guys,” as she told The New York Times. “By the way, if I wanted to go and do some of the things I was seeing everybody else do, Frank and Dean would say, ‘Don’t do that.’ They protected me. I think they were on some level attracted to me, but they knew better. It would have sacrificed the friendship.”