Shelley Winters (born Shirley Schrift; August 18, 1920 – January 14, 2006) was an American film actress whose career spanned seven decades.

[9] Winters had bit parts in MGM's Two Smart People (1946), and a series of films for United Artists: Susie Steps Out (1946), Abie's Irish Rose (1946) and New Orleans (1947).

She had bit parts in Living in a Big Way (1947) and Killer McCoy (1947) at MGM, The Gangster (1947) for King Brothers Productions and Red River (1948).

Winters first achieved stardom with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor's A Double Life (1947).

[10][11] Winters originally broke into Hollywood films as a blonde bombshell type, but quickly tired of the role's limitations.

She claims to have washed off her make-up to audition for the role of Alice Tripp, the factory girl, in A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, now a landmark American film.

[13] Her performance in A Place in the Sun (1951), a departure from the sexpot image that her studio, Universal Pictures, was grooming her for at the time, brought Winters her first acclaim, earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Winters returned to Universal to appear in Saskatchewan (1954), shot on location in Canada with Alan Ladd and Playgirl (1954) with Barry Sullivan.

[16] Winters performed in a version of The Women for Producers' Showcase then had a key role in I Am a Camera (1955) starring opposite Julie Harris and Laurence Harvey.

At Warner Bros, Winters was Jack Palance's leading lady in I Died a Thousand Times (1955), then for RKO she co starred with Rory Calhoun in The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955).

[17] Winters returned to Broadway in A Hatful of Rain, in 1955–1956, opposite Ben Gazzara and future husband Anthony Franciosa.

She appeared in episodes of The United States Steel Hour, Climax!, Wagon Train, Schlitz Playhouse, The DuPont Show of the Month, and Kraft Theatre.

In 1960, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Mrs. Van Daan in George Stevens' film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).

[20] Winters was in much demand as a character actor now, getting good roles in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) and The Young Savages (1961).

Winters was featured in the Italian film Time of Indifference (1964) with Rod Steiger and Claudia Cardinale, and had one of the many cameos in the religious epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), again for George Stevens.

Winters won her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar in A Patch of Blue (1965) for her performance as Rose-Ann D'Arcey, the cruel and vulgar mother of an illiterate, blind girl.

Winters wrote an evening of three one-act plays titled One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger (1970–1971), which ran for seven performances; the cast included Robert De Niro and Diane Ladd.

She had a supporting role in Blume in Love (1973) for Paul Mazursky and Cleopatra Jones (1973) and leading parts in Big Rose: Double Trouble (1974) and The Sex Symbol (1974).

[22] Winters guest-starred on McCloud and Chico and the Man and was seen in Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), That Lucky Touch (1975), Journey Into Fear (1975), Diamonds (1975), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) for Paul Mazursky, The Tenant (1976) for Roman Polanski, Mimì Bluette... fiore del mio giardino (1977) with Monica Vitti, Tentacles (1977), An Average Little Man (1977) with Alberto Sordi, Pete's Dragon (1977), The Initiation of Sarah (1978), and King of the Gypsies (1978).

[23] She starred in a 1978 Broadway production of Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, which only had a short run.

Winters starred in the Italian horror film Gran bollito (1977) and played Gladys Presley in Elvis (1979) for TV.

Winters' 1980s performances included Looping (1981), S.O.B., episodes of The Love Boat, Sex, Lies and Renaissance (1983), Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Ellie (1984), Déjà Vu (1985), Alice in Wonderland (1985), and The Delta Force (1986).

[27] Her final performances included Touch of a Stranger (1990), Stepping Out (1991) with Liza Minnelli, Weep No More, My Lady (1992), The Pickle (1993) for Mazursky, and The Silence of the Hams (1994).

Her final film roles were supporting ones: She played a restaurant owner and mother of an overweight cook in Heavy (1995) with Liv Tyler and Debbie Harry for James Mangold; an aristocrat in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), starring Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich; and an embittered nursing home administrator in 1999's Gideon.

Winters made an appearance at the 1998 Academy Awards telecast, which featured a tribute to Oscar winners past and present.

Her claimed partners included William Holden, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Errol Flynn, and Marlon Brando.