She made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character.

In 1990, Woodward earned a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College at age 60, graduating alongside her daughter Clea.

[6] Woodward majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, then headed to New York City to perform on the stage.

Woodward appeared in many other TV drama shows such as Tales of Tomorrow, Goodyear Playhouse, Danger, The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, You Are There, The Web, The Ford Television Theatre, The Elgin Hour, Robert Montgomery Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, The Star and the Story, Omnibus, Star Tonight, and Ponds Theater.

[9] For her next role, she starred in A Kiss Before Dying (1956) as an heiress pursued by a college student (Robert Wagner) who will stop at nothing to win her over.

[10] [11] With Woodward's credentials as a star attraction established, Fox gave her top billing in No Down Payment (1957), directed by Martin Ritt and produced by Jerry Wald.

Sidney Lumet cast Woodward alongside Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind (1960), a box office disappointment.

She then starred in the mid-life crisis drama Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), written by Stewart Stern, for which she received another Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

[15] Woodward was to have co-starred with Robert Shaw in Strindberg's The Dance of Death at Lincoln Center in 1974, but withdrew from the production during rehearsals.

[17] Woodward's credits in the 1980s included The Shadow Box (1980), directed by Newman, and Crisis at Central High (1981) for TV.

Woodward met Paul Newman on the set of the stage drama Picnic, in the early 1950s, and the two married on January 29, 1958, after his divorce from his first wife Jacqueline Witte was finalized.

Woodward also collaborated with her daughters, appearing with Nell in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), which was directed by Paul Newman, and with Melissa in the TV movie See How She Runs (1978).

Both at the top of their game as film stars, Woodward and Newman became a celebrity power couple and were featured in countless magazines and articles for the next fifty years.

[16] Woodward's final screen performance with Newman (and last appearance to date, excluding voiceover roles) was in the 2005 cable miniseries Empire Falls.

In 1993, Woodward appeared in the film Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks, and, in the same year, narrated Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence.

Woodward was a co-producer of Blind Spot, a drama about drug addiction, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Mini-Series or a Movie.

Also in 1995, Woodward directed off-Broadway revivals of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy and Waiting for Lefty at the Blue Light Theater Company in New York.

[26] She was executive producer of the 2003 television production of Our Town, featuring Newman as the stage manager (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award).

Woodward also recorded a reading of singer John Mellencamp's song "The Real Life" for his box set On the Rural Route 7609.

[citation needed] In 2022, Woodward and Newman were the subject of a six-part documentary by Ethan Hawke, The Last Movie Stars, which premiered on HBO Max.

Newman divorced his wife Jackie Witte, with whom he already had three children, and married Woodward on January 29, 1958, in Las Vegas.

"[33][34] Woodward has three daughters with Newman: Elinor Teresa "Nell" (1959), Melissa Stewart (1961), and Claire Olivia "Clea" (1965).

[39][40] Documents declassified in 2017 show that the National Security Agency had created a biographical file on Woodward as part of its monitoring of prominent US citizens whose names appeared in signals intelligence.

The camp, located in Ashford, Connecticut, provides free services to 20,000 children and their families coping with cancer and other serious illnesses.

[43] In 1990, after working toward her bachelor's degree for more than 10 years, Woodward graduated from Sarah Lawrence College along with her daughter Clea.

Season 3 Episode 36: "The Safe Place" In 1958, Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve.

[3] In 1960, she won the Silver Shell for Best Actress at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for her work on The Fugitive Kind .

She was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974 for her performance in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Woodward won 2 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie: for See How She Runs as a divorced teacher who trains for a marathon; and in Do You Remember Love as a professor who begins to suffer from Alzheimer's disease.

[48] The origin of this legend is not known with certainty, but according to Johnny Grant, the long-time Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Woodward was the first celebrity to agree to pose with her star for photographers, and therefore was singled out in the collective public imagination as the first awardee.