After Oscar nominations for Atlantic City (1980), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994), Sarandon won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (1995).

Her other notable films include Pretty Baby (1978), The Hunger (1983), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Bull Durham (1988), Little Women (1994), Stepmom (1998), Enchanted (2007), The Lovely Bones (2009), Cloud Atlas (2012), and The Meddler (2015).

Also known for her social and political activism, Sarandon was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 and received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award in 2006.

[3] She is the eldest of nine children of Lenora Marie (née Criscione 1923–2020)[4][5] and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, an advertising executive, television producer, and one-time nightclub singer.

She has four brothers: Phillip Leslie Jr., Terry (an outdoorsman, journalist, and community leader), Timothy, and O'Brian (owner of Building 8 Brewery in Northampton, Mass.

[11] When she was four years old,[11] the Tomalin family moved from New York City to the newly developed Stephenville community, located in the northern area of Raritan (now Edison) Township, New Jersey.

[34] During and shortly after college, she supported herself by emptying bedpans in a hospital,[35] cutting hair, cleaning houses and working as a switchboard operator.

[26] Her career gained momentum in 1974, when she starred in F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles', a highly rated made-for-television film, and Billy Wilder's screen adaptation of The Front Page.

In 1975, Sarandon appeared in the cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show and had the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford.

[33] Her most controversial film appearance was in Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983), a modern vampire story in which she had a sex scene with Catherine Deneuve.

However, Sarandon did not become a "household name" until she appeared with Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins in the film Bull Durham (1988), a commercial and critical success.

Janet Maslin, in The New York Times, wrote of her performance in the last film: "Ms. Sarandon takes the kind of risk she took playing a stubbornly obsessed mother in Lorenzo's Oil.

[44] Additionally, she has received eight Golden Globe nominations, including for the films White Palace (1990), Stepmom (1998), Igby Goes Down (2002), and Bernard and Doris (2007).

She appeared on Friends, Malcolm in the Middle, Mad TV, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle's Show, 30 Rock, Rescue Me, and Mike & Molly.

[48] Sarandon appeared with an all-star cast in The Lovely Bones (2009), directed by Peter Jackson, and worked with daughter Eva Amurri in Middle of Nowhere (2008), That's My Boy (2012) and The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (2015).

In 2017, Sarandon portrayed Bette Davis in the first season of FX's anthology series Feud,[50] where she earned her ninth Golden Globe nomination.

[64] In January 2007, she appeared with Robbins and Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. in support of a Congressional measure to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.

[68] In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Sarandon and Tim Robbins campaigned[69] for John Edwards in the New Hampshire communities of Hampton,[70] Bedford, and Dover.

[83] In May 2015, Sarandon launched a campaign with fundraising platform Represent.com to sell T-shirts to help finance the documentary Deep Run, the story of a poor North Carolina teen undergoing a gender transition.

[84] On March 12, 2011, Sarandon spoke before a crowd in Madison, Wisconsin protesting Governor Scott Walker and his Budget Repair Bill.

[86] Her use of the word Nazi to describe Pope Benedict XVI on October 15, 2011 generated complaints from Roman Catholic authorities[87] and from the Anti-Defamation League, which called on Sarandon to apologize.

[88] Sarandon brought activist Rosa Clemente to the 75th Golden Globe Awards[89] and participated in a rally against gun violence in June 2018.

She also co-signed an open letter criticizing Israel for labeling six Palestinian human rights groups as terror organizations, and quoted Desmond Tutu on the conflict saying that "true peace can ultimately be built only on justice".

[93][94] Sarandon was the executive producer for Soufra, a documentary that covered the development of a food truck in the Bourj el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon.

[98] At a pro-Palestinian rally in Union Square on November 17, Sarandon said: "There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence."

[99][100][101] On December 1, Sarandon issued an apology for the phrasing of her comment, saying that "it implies that until recently Jews have been strangers to persecution, when the opposite is true".

From 1977 until 1980, Sarandon had a live-in relationship with director Louis Malle,[104][105] after which she was sporadically involved with musician David Bowie[106] and, briefly, actor Sean Penn.

[118] In 2006, Sarandon and ten relatives, including her son Miles, traveled to the United Kingdom to trace her family's Welsh genealogy.

[120] She also previously told Pride Source in 2017 that her sexuality was "open" and "up for grabs",[111] and on a 2021 episode of the Divorced Not Dead podcast said of her dating interests, "I don't care if it's a man or a woman.