Susan Sarandon

Susan Abigail Tomalin was born in New York City on Oct 6th, 1946. Her parents were Lenora Marie and Phillip Leslie Tomalin. She was the oldest of nine children. She is a mixture of English, Irish, Welsh and Italian descent. Her father was an advertising executive, a television producer and a nightclub singer during the Big Band era.

Her family was catholic and so Sarandon went to all white, all girl elementary schools run by nuns. She then went to Edison High and was a cheerleader. Susan was in her late teens during the early sixties and became quite an anti-war activist. She lived through the Kennedy years and the changes that occured in America during that turbulent time as one of the earliest baby boomers.

After her High School graduation in 1964 Susan enrolled in Catholic University of America, in Washington DC. She studied English , Philosophy and Military Strategy. While there she worked as a secretary in the Drama Department and she met Chris Sarandon who was four years her senior. She credits him with getting her involved with acting.

A year before Susan graduated from college she and Chris Sarandon were married (1967) and she would take Sarandon as her married name and her stage name. Even through their divorce and up through today she carries his name.

Susan had already been arrested in Civil Rights marches and she and Chris were active protesters  of the Vietnam War and there was plenty to keep them busy the following year with the 2nd Kennedy assassination and Martin Luther King Jr's. She was doing some modeling for money while her husband Chris was looking for an agent. He would take Susan with him for someone to audition with. The agent surprised them when he took them both on.

From 1970 until 1974 both Susan and Chris were in TV soap operas and Susan continued to model and she appeared in a couple of movies. One had quite a bit of nudity in it. In 1974 some plays she performed in were filmed and shown on TV. Here is where she started to be truly noticed by the public. This along with parts in movies with Beau Bridges and Jack Lemmon got Susan her first of 21 appearances on the tonight show with Johnny Carson. The public was taking notice of the young vixon actress.

As the 1970's continued Susan would continue to make movies. She was with Robert Redford in "The Great Waldo Pepper". A turning point for her was the part she played in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". This flop of a movie was destined to become a cult classic with late night screenings all over America and a following similar to the rock group "The Greatful Dead". Sarandon's role made her a bonefide American Sex Symbol.

Her husband Chris in the meantime scored an academy award nomination for playing the transgender wife of Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon". However, that would be the highlight of his acting career. Susan and he would divorce in 1979, and she would go on to become an iconic American actress.

She has had parts in countless movies. Some of the more well known ones are, "Pretty Baby", "The Witches of Eastwick", "Bull Durham", "Thelma and Louise", "The Client" and "Dead Man Walking", where she won her ACADEMY AWARD. She has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards for Best Actress and won one. She has been nominated for 6 golden globe awards, and she has won a Screen Actor's Guild Award, a National Board of Review Award, a National Society of Film Critics Award, and a Genie Award. In television she has been nominated three times for the coveted Emmy Awards.

As she has continued to act she has had a timeless presence on the screen and now at the age of 63 she continues to land jobs and dazzle audiences.

When the filming of Bull Durham was done, Sarandon returned to Rome and Tim Robbins one of her co-stars left for New York. But something had happened during filming and, though she was his senior by 12 years, Robbins knew it. Soon they would hook up in a relationship which was publicly ended as the year 2009 closed out. Even though they were never officially married they were together for 23 years and had two children. Their son Jack Henry was born in 1989, Miles Guthrie three years later. Susan also has a daugter, Eva Amurri.

"Together the couple would become their profession's foremost liberal activists. In 1989, along with Christopher Reeve and others, they would help form The Creative Coalition, a group from the arts and entertainment communities focusing on abuses of the First Amendment, and social issues. In time, Tim and Susan would go much further."

At 63 years old Susan is still making films. Her latest is a suspense "The Lovely Bones". She was the wicked stepmother witch in disney's "Enchanted", and she has done voices for animated movies as well as countless documentaries. I expect that Susan Sarandon will work well into her 70's. She will be featured on the upcoming NBC television show "Who Do You Think You Are" premiering in March of 2010. Learn more about Susan and her family by tuning in.

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