SARANDON, SUSAN

born Oct. 4, 1946, New York, N.Y., U.S. original name Susan Abigail Tomalin American film actress who transcended the early roles of her career, when she often played characters who were highly sensual but little else, to become a performer of considerable versatility and emotional depth. In 1995, with her reputation as a leading actress well established, she won an Academy Award for her unglamorous yet engaging performance as a nun counseling death-row prisoners in Dead Man Walking. Despite studying drama at Catholic University of America (B.A., 1968), Washington, D.C., where she met and married actor Christopher Sarandon (they divorced in 1979), Susan Sarandon had no intention of pursuing an acting career and worked as a model after graduation. She read with her husband at one of his auditions, however, and soon found herself cast as the female lead in the film Joe (1970). Small film roles and television work (notably in the soap opera A World Apart) followed until 1975, when Sarandon shined as the ingenue in the cult favourite The Rocky Horror Picture Show and starred opposite Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper. Two films directed by Louis Malle (with whom she was romantically involved) brought her even greater attention: Pretty Baby (1978) and Atlantic City (1981). In both films Sarandon played women who are initially presented simply as objects of male desire but who later reveal their underlying intelligence and independence. Her performance in Atlantic City was particularly compelling and led to her first Oscar nomination. Sarandon was also widely praised in 1980 for her performance in the off-Broadway production A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking. Sarandon then pursued a variety of roles, sometimes playing leads and sometimes taking challenging, smaller parts. An outspoken activist, she narrated and appeared in numerous documentaries about issues that concerned her. She gave strong performances as a modern-day Ariel in the comedy-drama Tempest (1982) and as a scientist-turned-vampire in the horror film The Hunger (1984), although the films were less successful. Her portrayal of a sultry literature instructor and molder of men in the romantic comedy Bull Durham (1988) was one of her most popular and established her star status. Sarandon's later noteworthy roles included the worldly waitress-turned-outlaw in Thelma & Louise (1991), the indefatigable mother searching for a cure for her son's disease in Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (which was written and directed by Tim Robbins, whom Sarandon met and fell in love with when they costarred in Bull Durham).