Winters, Shelley (1920–2006)

US actor. She entered Hollywood as a young starlet with blond bombshell appeal but soon became known for her talent and commitment to the craft of acting. She went on to enjoy a prolific career spanning six decades. She won two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress, one for the adaptation The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), the other for the racially charged drama A Patch of Blue (1965).

Winters's first major film was What a Woman! (1943). She received Academy Award nominations for her roles in A Place in the Sun (1951), as a young factory worker caught in a love triangle alongside Elizabeth Taylor, and in the disaster classic The Poseidon Adventure (1972), as an ill-fated victim of a shipwreck.

Winters was born in East St Louis, Illinois, but moved to Brooklyn, New York, at the age of three. She studied acting at the Hollywood Studio Club and was a roommate of Marilyn Monroe. Like Monroe, she was a media sensation, well-known for her romantic conquests and strong opinions. She went on to write about her affairs with film stars such as William Holden, Burt Lancaster, and Marlon Brando in autobiographies published during the 1980s. During the late 20th century she appeared in television sitcoms, for example as the title character's grandmother in Roseanne.