Elaine Stritch

Born: 2 February 1925
Where: Detroit, Michigan

Elaine has achieved success primarily as a stage actress in both musicals and plays.

At 19 she moved to New York to pursue a career in showbusiness, and within two years landed a role in the Broadway production Loco.

In 1949 she began appearing regularly on the TV series The Growing Paynes, and by the 50s her stage career began to excel when she was tapped as Ethel Merman's understudy in Call Me Madam.

Over the next four decades, Elaine amassed numerous credits, proving herself equally at home in dramas, musicals and comedies and earned four Tony Award nominations.

Elaine has made only a handful of films, beginning with The Scarlet Hour in 1956. She provided comic relief as an American nurse in the remake of A Farewell to Arms and played the lesbian owner of a nightclub in Who Killed Teddy Bear?

By the mid-70s, Elaine settled in London, where she headlined the British sitcoms Two's Company and Nobody's Perfect; and on the big screen she appeared opposite John Gielgud and Dirk Bogarde in Alain Resnais' Providence, then made a return a decade later in Woody Allen's September.

Elaine was seen in the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau vehicle Out to Sea, and in support of Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman in the comedy Krippendorf's Tribe. She appeared in another Woody Allen film, Small Time Crooks, before taking a role in Autumn In New York with Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.