Susan Sarandon

Biography
Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1970 and has won an Academy Award for her role in Dead Man Walking. She is also noted for her political activism for liberal causes.

Sarandon, the eldest of nine children, was born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City, the daughter of Lenora Marie (née Criscione) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, who worked as an advertising executive, television producer, and nightclub singer during the big band era. Sarandon's father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry and her mother was of Sicilian/Italian descent. Sarandon, and 10 ...( show more

) of her relatives (including her significant other Tim Robbins and her son Miles), traveled to Wales to track her family's Welsh genealogy. Their journey was documented by the BBC Wales programme "Coming Home: Susan Sarandon". Sarandon was raised in a Roman Catholic family. She graduated from Edison High School in 1964, and then attended The Catholic University of America from 1964 to 1968 where she attained a BA in drama.

Sarandon at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival In 1969, Sarandon went to a casting call for the motion-picture Joe with her then husband Chris Sarandon. Although he did not get a part, she was cast in a major role of a disaffected teen who disappears into the seedy underworld (the film was released in 1970). Five years later, she appeared in the cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That same year, she also played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford. Her most controversial film appearance was in The Hunger in 1983, a modern vampire story which turned out to be a critical and box office flop. The film has gained some cult status for a rather graphic lesbian love scene between Sarandon and co-star Catherine Deneuve. It was the first mainstream American film to feature such a scene between two star actresses. However, Sarandon did not become a "household name" until her breakthrough in the 1988 film Bull Durham. which became a huge commercial and critical success. Sarandon received five Academy Award nominations for best actress, in Atlantic City (1981), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994), finally winning in 1996 for Dead Man Walking. Her other movies include Stepmom (1998), Anywhere but Here (1999), Cradle Will Rock (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Shall We Dance (2004), Alfie (2004), Romance & Cigarettes (2005) and Elizabethtown (2005). Sarandon appeared in The Simpsons as herself, in an episode which aired in March 2006; she has appeared on the show once before as a ballet teacher. She made appearances on the shows Friends, Malcolm in the Middle, Mad TV, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle's Show, and Rescue Me. Most recently, Sarandon joined the cast of the adaptation ofThe Lovely Bones, opposite Rachel Weisz, and appeared with her daughter, Eva Amurri, in Middle of Nowhere; both of the movies were filmed in 2007.

While in college, she met and married fellow student Chris Sarandon in 1967. They divorced in 1979 and she retained her married name as her stage name. In the mid-1980s, Sarandon dated director Franco Amurri, with whom she had a daughter in 1985, actress Eva Amurri. Since 1988, Sarandon has been in a relationship with actor Tim Robbins, whom she met while filming Bull Durham. The couple have two children: Jack Henry (born 1989) and Miles Guthrie (born 1992). Sarandon and Robbins are often involved in the same social and political causes.