Ranked! Shirley MacLaine films
As the actor turns 90, Peter Bradshaw picks her greatest roles, from romantic lead to cantankerous old dame
1 The Apartment (1960) MacLaine is Fran, the lonely, beautiful elevator operator in 60s corporate New York. Junior salaryman Bud (Jack Lemmon) is shyly in love with her, while buttering up senior married executives by letting them use his apartment for extramarital liaisons. Their tender love-affair, a meeting of two lonely people, concludes with a delicately conjugal game of cards and MacLaine has one of Hollywood’s most famously unsentimental last lines: “Shut up and deal!”
2 Postcards from the Edge (1990) Based on the semiautobiographical Carrie Fisher novel, MacLaine plays Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds. Meryl Streep plays Fisher, who is forced by the movie’s insurance company to live with her mum, a tinseltown veteran who loves lording it over her daughter – while living through her.
3 Terms of Endearment (1983) MacLaine’s Oscar-winning moment finally arrived as Aurora, a controlling mother who is also having a relationship with her wild-man neighbour (Jack Nicholson). A crisis provides the springboard for some passionate declamatory acting from MacLaine.
4 Woman Times Seven (1967) Fascinatingly, and perhaps uniquely, Vittorio De Sica gave the young MacLaine a film that really did show her as a sexually charismatic lead. It’s a portmanteau of seven tales, mostly about infidelity. A little dated in its 60s-ness, but a stylish and potent movie nonetheless.
5 Steel Magnolias (1989) Set in and around a southern beauty salon, MacLaine is just about the right side of hammy, as Louisa, or “Ouiser”, the grouchy old meanie being incessantly goaded by the rich widow Olympia Dukakis. She’s outrageously over-the-top, like the other senior cast members, but always brings warmth and fun.
6 The Turning Point (1977) Oscar-nominated for her fierce performance, MacLaine plays DeeDee, a once promising ballerina who gave it all up to have a child. Meanwhile, her friend and rival, Emma (Anne Bancroft), became a star and is now godmother to DeeDee’s daughter. But a reunion between them triggers an explosion of resentment as DeeDee reveals how she felt coerced into sacrificing her future for Emma’s.
7 The Children’s Hour (1961) MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn are friends who open a boarding school for girls. A spiteful pupil spreads the rumour that the two are lovers. MacLaine gives the part her all and rather outclasses the soignée Hepburn.
8 Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) Clint Eastwood and MacLaine in a violent Don Siegel western is a great face-off. He is Hogan, a mercenary whose cynicism evaporates when he sees MacLaine’s Sister Sara about to be raped by bandits. After saving her, he offers her protection on her journey, but discovers she is not what she seems to be.
9 Irma La Douce (1963) MacLaine and Jack Lemmon were more famously (and successfully) paired elsewhere, but she gives this movie her authentic showbiz pizzazz as sex worker Irma. Lemmon is the clueless Nestor, an ex-cop unjustly drummed out of the force, who falls in love with her. He unwittingly becomes her pimp and then bizarrely disguises himself as an English milord to be her only client.
10 The Trouble with Harry (1955) MacLaine made her screen debut at 21 in this absurdist nightmare by Alfred Hitchcock. When the corpse of a man called Harry is found, MacLaine’s wife doesn’t seem too unhappy – and is also flirting with a would-be artist. MacLaine is not really a Hitchcock heroine: too smart, too selfaware, too nonblond.