The Many Faces of Joanne
Actor’s SAG Award was only one in long string of global accolades
In 1994, Joanne Woodward won the Screen Actors Guild best actress in a TV movie or miniseries award for her role as “Maggie” in the screen adaptation of Anne Tyler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Breathing Lessons.” At that time, Woodward was near the end of a run of acclaimed performances that began and ended on the small screen.
Before her famed turns in films, which garnered Woodward an array of honors, including the actress Oscar and Golden Globe for “The Three Faces of Eve” in 1957, the Southern-born legend first appeared nearly a dozen times on many of the new medium’s top anthology programs, including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Omnibus,” “Robert Montgomery Presents” and “Studio One.”
Once she began her big-screen career in 1955, debuting in the Technicolor Western “Count Three and Pray,” meatier, dramatic roles quickly came her way, culminating in the early career Oscar triumph for “Eve.”
In the following decades, Woodward consistently mixed her film roles with her television appearances and regularly scored critical plaudits in both arenas. Film brought her the actress award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival for “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds,” directed by her husband and fellow screen legend, the late Paul Newman, as well as further Oscar nominations for “Rachel, Rachel” (1968), “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams” (1973) and “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge” (1990).
Her honors for her television roles included Emmy actress wins for “See How She Runs” (1978) and “Do You Remember Love” (1985), and she also scored an actress Golden Globe for her Sag-winning role in “Breathing Lessons.”
For a deeper dive into Woodward’s illustrious multi-decade career as one of America’s finest actresses and one-half of America’s greatest theatrical couples, check out Ethan Hawke’s 2022 six-part HBO doc series, “The Last Movie Stars.”