Ali MacGraw

Ali MacGraw
File:Ali MacGraw - 1972.jpg MacGraw in The Getaway, 1972
Born	Elizabeth Alice MacGraw (1939-04-01) April 1, 1939 Pound Ridge, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress model author animal rights activist
Years active	1960–present
Spouse(s)	Robin Hoen (m. 1961; div. 1962) Robert Evans (m. 1969; div. 1972) Steve McQueen (m. 1973; div. 1978)
Children	Josh Evans

Elizabeth Alice MacGraw (born April 1, 1939) is an American actress and activist. She gained attention with her role in the film Goodbye, Columbus (1969), 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 (1970), 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 film The Getaway (1972). She played the female lead in Convoy (1978) and headlined the romantic sports drama Players (1979), the comedy Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), and appeared in the historical novel-based television miniseries The Winds of War (1983). In 1991, she published an autobiography, Moving Pictures.

Early life

MacGraw was born in Pound Ridge, New York, the daughter of commercial artists Frances (née Klein; 1901–1980) 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 in Paris before settling in Greenwich Village. Her parents married when her mother was nearing 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 in The Getaway, 1972

MacGraw began her acting career in television commercials, including one for the Polaroid Swinger camera. 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 (1969), but real stardom came when she starred opposite Ryan O'Neal in Love Story (1970), 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 (1972), 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 (1978), opposite Kris Kristofferson. She then appeared in the films Players (1979) and Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), 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.

In February 2021, MacGraw and O'Neal were honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, nearly 50 years after the release of Love Story.

Stage

MacGraw made her Broadway theatre debut in New York City in 2006 as a dysfunctional matriarch in the drama Festen (The Celebration).

In 2016, MacGraw reunited with Ryan O'Neal in a staging of A.R. Gurney's play Love Letters, which toured the US and UK through 2017.

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 50's, 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 (PETA), 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 acknowledged having 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 (d. September 13, 1962), a Harvard-educated banker, after dating for five years. The couple divorced after a year and a half.

On October 24, 1969, MacGraw married film producer Robert Evans (d. October 26, 2019); 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.

Since her divorce from McQueen, she has dated Warren Beatty, Rick Danko, Bill Hudson, Ronald Meyer, Rod Stryker, Fran Tarkenton, Peter Weller, Henry Wolf and Mickey Raphael.

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's 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." Evans told Vanity Fair in 2010 that during the last four decades of his life, MacGraw had been a good friend to him.

MacGraw has lived in Tesuque, New Mexico, since 1994, after the house she rented in Malibu 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 the birthday party of character Elliott Schwartz, set in Santa Fe, but her appearance did not make the final cut of the episode.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1968	A Lovely Way to Die	Melody
1969	Goodbye, Columbus	Brenda Patimkin	Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer - Female Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer
1970	Love Story	Jennifer Cavalleri	David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actress Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1972	The Getaway	Carol McCoy
1978	Convoy	Melissa
1979	Players	Nicole Boucher
1980	Just Tell Me What You Want	Bones Burton
1985	Murder Elite	Diane Baker
1994	Natural Causes	Fran Jakes
1997	Glam	Lynn Travers
1999	Get Bruce	Herself

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	The Winds of War	Natalie Jastrow	TV miniseries
1983	China Rose	Rose
1985	Dynasty	Lady Ashley Mitchell	14 episodes
1988	Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abromowitz	Herself	TV special
1992	Survive the Savage Sea	Claire Carpenter	TV film
1993	Gunsmoke: The Long Ride	Uncle Jane Merkel
2002	The Trail of the Painted Ponies	Narrator
2005	Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah	Herself
2007	Do You Sleep in the Nude?	Herself
2009	Split Estate	Narrator
2010	Landscapes of Enchantment	Narrator
2012	Valles Caldera: The Science	Narrator

General sources

• Artists Direct biography
• People magazine interview, February 14, 1983

External links

• Ali MacGraw at the Internet Movie Database
• Ali MacGraw at the TCM Movie Database