BARBARA HERSHEY
Name: Barbara Lynn Herzstein
Born: 5 February 1948 Hollywood, California
Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948) is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning
American actress, known for her many film roles.
Born Barbara Lynn Herzstein on February 5, 1948 in Hollywood, California to an
Irish American mother and a Jewish American father who was a horse-racing
columnist, Hershey attended Hollywood High School. Her debut came in three
episodes of Gidget in 1965, which she followed up by being cast in the
television series The Monroes (1966). She found working on The Monroes such a
dispiriting experience that she wrote pseudonymous letters to the producers
asking that the show be cancelled. In 1967, she also made a guest appearance on
the hit western series "Daniel Boone" in an episode titled "The Kings Shilling."
Hershey's feature film debut was in the 1968 comedy With Six You Get Eggroll
which marked Doris Day's final screen appearance. This was followed by the 1969
Glenn Ford western Heaven with a Gun, where one of her co-stars was future Kung
Fu star David Carradine. They became a couple and a prominent symbol of the
Hollywood counterculture, becoming parents to a child whom they named Free (who
later changed his name to Tom).
Later that year came the drama Last Summer, based on the novel by Evan Hunter (better
known for his police procedurals written under the pseudonym Ed McBain) and
directed by future Mommie Dearest helmsman Frank Perry. The film received an X
rating for a graphic rape scene and earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar
nomination for co-star Catherine Burns. During the filming of a scene for Last
Summer, a seagull was killed. Hershey felt a sense of personal responsibility
for its death and went by the name of Barbara Seagull for several years
professionally in the early 1970s as a tribute to the creature.
Her 1970 film The Baby Maker explored the idea of surrogate motherhood many
years before it became a mainstream reproductive option and reinforced her image
as a free-spirited hippie.
This image helped secure her the starring role in the 1972 Roger Corman
production Boxcar Bertha, which was being directed on a typically low Corman
budget by a fresh-out-of-film-school Martin Scorsese. During filming, Hershey
gave Scorsese a copy of her favorite book - Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last
Temptation of Christ. Adapting that book into a film would become a 16-year
labor of love for Scorsese, who would eventually cast Hershey as Mary Magdalene
- though not before making her audition, to prove that she had earned it.
Hershey's co-star in Boxcar Bertha was once again David Carradine. They would
later recreate their love scene in a hay-filled boxcar for a Playboy magazine
pictorial.
In 1976, she starred alongside Charlton Heston in The Last Hard Men. However,
the hippie label soon became a career impediment and by the late 1970s she was
appearing in made-for-TV movies like Flood! and Sunshine Christmas. But her work
in Richard Rush's 1980 critical favorite The Stunt Man - her first big screen
appearance in four years - began a gradual career renaissance.
Her appearance in the 1981 horror film The Entity - where she played a woman
repeatedly raped by an unseen supernatural force - sufficiently impressed
Michael Douglas, who a decade later fought to have her cast as his estranged
wife in Falling Down. She also portrayed Errol Flynn's first wife, actress Lili
Damita in the TV movie My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1985), based on Flynn's
autobiography.
Hershey played a small, but memorable role as a mad woman who seduces and shoots
Robert Redford's character in The Natural (1984). She also made a large
impression on Woody Allen, who would later foster her mid-80s career revival by
casting her in his greatest commercial success Hannah and Her Sisters.
She gained increased visibility with performance as Glennis Yeager, wife of test
pilot Chuck Yeager, in Philip Kaufman's 1983 film The Right Stuff and as Gene
Hackman's love interest in the basketball film Hoosiers. Hershey followed the
commercial success of Hannah and Her Sisters with unprecedented back-to-back
wins for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Shy People and for A World
Apart.
For her role in the 1988 Bette Midler melodrama Beaches, she injected collagen
into her lips - an act that drew negative media coverage.
In 1990, she won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special
for her turn as real-life murderer Candy Morrison in A Killing in a Small Town.
Throughout the nineties, Hershey made more small independent films and
television projects.
As Madame Merle in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of the Henry James novel The
Portrait of a Lady, Hershey earned an Oscar nomination and won the Best
Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics. In 1999,
Hershey starred in Drowning on Dry Land with Naveen Andrews - with whom she
entered into a romantic relationship. During a brief separation in 2005, Andrews
fathered a child by another woman. He and Hershey have reconciled.
In 2001, Hershey was part of a largely Australian ensemble cast for the
critically successful mystery Lantana, which also starred Kerry Armstrong,
Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush playing a troubled psychiatrist.
Name: Barbara Lynn Herzstein
Born: 5 February 1948 Hollywood, California
Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948) is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning
American actress, known for her many film roles.
Born Barbara Lynn Herzstein on February 5, 1948 in Hollywood, California to an
Irish American mother and a Jewish American father who was a horse-racing
columnist, Hershey attended Hollywood High School. Her debut came in three
episodes of Gidget in 1965, which she followed up by being cast in the
television series The Monroes (1966). She found working on The Monroes such a
dispiriting experience that she wrote pseudonymous letters to the producers
asking that the show be cancelled. In 1967, she also made a guest appearance on
the hit western series "Daniel Boone" in an episode titled "The Kings Shilling."
Hershey's feature film debut was in the 1968 comedy With Six You Get Eggroll
which marked Doris Day's final screen appearance. This was followed by the 1969
Glenn Ford western Heaven with a Gun, where one of her co-stars was future Kung
Fu star David Carradine. They became a couple and a prominent symbol of the
Hollywood counterculture, becoming parents to a child whom they named Free (who
later changed his name to Tom).
Later that year came the drama Last Summer, based on the novel by Evan Hunter (better
known for his police procedurals written under the pseudonym Ed McBain) and
directed by future Mommie Dearest helmsman Frank Perry. The film received an X
rating for a graphic rape scene and earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar
nomination for co-star Catherine Burns. During the filming of a scene for Last
Summer, a seagull was killed. Hershey felt a sense of personal responsibility
for its death and went by the name of Barbara Seagull for several years
professionally in the early 1970s as a tribute to the creature.
Her 1970 film The Baby Maker explored the idea of surrogate motherhood many
years before it became a mainstream reproductive option and reinforced her image
as a free-spirited hippie.
This image helped secure her the starring role in the 1972 Roger Corman
production Boxcar Bertha, which was being directed on a typically low Corman
budget by a fresh-out-of-film-school Martin Scorsese. During filming, Hershey
gave Scorsese a copy of her favorite book - Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last
Temptation of Christ. Adapting that book into a film would become a 16-year
labor of love for Scorsese, who would eventually cast Hershey as Mary Magdalene
- though not before making her audition, to prove that she had earned it.
Hershey's co-star in Boxcar Bertha was once again David Carradine. They would
later recreate their love scene in a hay-filled boxcar for a Playboy magazine
pictorial.
In 1976, she starred alongside Charlton Heston in The Last Hard Men. However,
the hippie label soon became a career impediment and by the late 1970s she was
appearing in made-for-TV movies like Flood! and Sunshine Christmas. But her work
in Richard Rush's 1980 critical favorite The Stunt Man - her first big screen
appearance in four years - began a gradual career renaissance.
Her appearance in the 1981 horror film The Entity - where she played a woman
repeatedly raped by an unseen supernatural force - sufficiently impressed
Michael Douglas, who a decade later fought to have her cast as his estranged
wife in Falling Down. She also portrayed Errol Flynn's first wife, actress Lili
Damita in the TV movie My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1985), based on Flynn's
autobiography.
Hershey played a small, but memorable role as a mad woman who seduces and shoots
Robert Redford's character in The Natural (1984). She also made a large
impression on Woody Allen, who would later foster her mid-80s career revival by
casting her in his greatest commercial success Hannah and Her Sisters.
She gained increased visibility with performance as Glennis Yeager, wife of test
pilot Chuck Yeager, in Philip Kaufman's 1983 film The Right Stuff and as Gene
Hackman's love interest in the basketball film Hoosiers. Hershey followed the
commercial success of Hannah and Her Sisters with unprecedented back-to-back
wins for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Shy People and for A World
Apart.
For her role in the 1988 Bette Midler melodrama Beaches, she injected collagen
into her lips - an act that drew negative media coverage.
In 1990, she won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special
for her turn as real-life murderer Candy Morrison in A Killing in a Small Town.
Throughout the nineties, Hershey made more small independent films and
television projects.
As Madame Merle in Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of the Henry James novel The
Portrait of a Lady, Hershey earned an Oscar nomination and won the Best
Supporting Actress award from the National Society of Film Critics. In 1999,
Hershey starred in Drowning on Dry Land with Naveen Andrews - with whom she
entered into a romantic relationship. During a brief separation in 2005, Andrews
fathered a child by another woman. He and Hershey have reconciled.
In 2001, Hershey was part of a largely Australian ensemble cast for the
critically successful mystery Lantana, which also starred Kerry Armstrong,
Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush playing a troubled psychiatrist.