Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon (born October 4, 1946, New York, New York, U.S.) American film actress who transcended the early roles of her career, in which she often played characters who were highly sensual but little else, to become a performer of considerable versatility and emotional depth. In 1996 she won an Academy Award for her unglamorous yet engaging performance as a nun counseling death-row prisoners in Dead Man Walking (1995).

After graduating with a degree in drama from Catholic University of America (B.A., 1968) in Washington, D.C., Sarandon worked as a model and appeared in small film roles and television work, notably in the soap opera A World Apart. In 1975 she shined as the ingenue in the cult favourite The Rocky Horror Picture Show and starred opposite Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper.

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Two films directed by Louis Malle (with whom she was romantically involved) brought her greater attention: Pretty Baby (1978) and Atlantic City (1981). In both films Sarandon played women who are initially presented simply as objects of male desire but who later reveal their underlying intelligence and independence. Her performance in Atlantic City led to her first Oscar nomination. She next appeared as a modern-day Ariel in the comedy-drama Tempest (1982) and as a scientist-turned-vampire in the horror film The Hunger (1983), although these films were less successful.

Her portrayal of a sultry literature instructor in the romantic comedy Bull Durham (1988) established her star status. The film also introduced her to Tim Robbins, with whom she began a family; their relationship lasted for several decades, and the couple became known as active promoters of leftist causes. Sarandon won further Academy Award nominations for her roles as the worldly waitress-turned-outlaw in Thelma & Louise (1991), a mother searching for a cure for her son’s disease in Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), a novice lawyer in The Client (1994), and Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking, which was written and directed by Robbins. Sarandon again worked with Robbins in his film about the WPA Federal Theatre Project, Cradle Will Rock (1999), in which a group of actors attempt to produce a left-leaning musical during the 1930s.

In the early 2000s Sarandon starred in such comic dramas as Igby Goes Down (2002) and Elizabethtown (2005). Later she returned to political themes and brought her antiwar sentiments to the screen with In the Valley of Elah (2007), in which she portrayed the distraught mother of a soldier who disappears after returning home from a tour of duty in the Iraq War. Her subsequent film roles included an evil queen in Enchanted (2007) as well as maternal characters in the supernatural drama The Lovely Bones (2009), Oliver Stone’s financial drama Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), and the comedy Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011).

Sarandon continued to work steadily as she entered her late 60s. In 2012 she appeared as a librarian in the offbeat Robot & Frank, as a woman afflicted by her husband’s duplicity in the thriller Arbitrage, as a housewife arrested for the radical activities of her past in The Company You Keep, and as multiple characters in the mosaic-like epic Cloud Atlas. The following year she played a hard-nosed district attorney in the action-filled drama Snitch and had a role in the multigenerational-family farce The Big Wedding. Sarandon then assumed the role of the alcoholic grandmother of the title character in the comedy Tammy (2014). She was acidly funny as the supportive lesbian grandmother of a transgender teenager in About Ray and was praised for the sincerity of her performance as a cheerfully smothering mother in The Meddler (both 2015). Sarandon appeared as another troublemaking parent in A Bad Moms Christmas (2017) and then starred as a mother who turns to an underground network when her journalist son is taken hostage in Syria in Viper Club (2018). Her later movie credits included The Jesus Rolls (2019), a comedy centring on a character from the cult classic The Big Lebowski (1998); the animated Fearless (2020); and Ride the Eagle (2021), a dramedy in which she was cast as a mother estranged from her son.

In addition to her film work, Sarandon also appeared on television. She guest-starred on the sitcom Friends and the drama series ER and had recurring roles on the comedy-dramas Rescue Me and The Big C. In 2006 she portrayed tobacco heiress Doris Duke in the HBO television movie Bernard and Doris. She also was cast in HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack (2010), which examined the life of Jack Kevorkian, a doctor who was a vocal supporter of physician-assisted suicide. In 2017 Sarandon appeared in the TV anthology series Feud, which recounts various famous disputes. In the first season, Bette and Joan, she starred as Bette Davis, and Jessica Lange was cast as Joan Crawford. Sarandon also had a recurring role on Ray Donovan in 2017–19.