Anne Bancroft

Bancroft was raised in Little Italy, in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, attended P.S. 12, later moving to 1580 Zerega Ave. and graduating from Christopher Columbus High School in 1948.

She later attended HB Studio, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Actors Studio and the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women at the University of California, Los Angeles.

After appearing in a number of live television dramas, including Studio One and The Goldbergs under the name Anne Marno, later, at Darryl Zanuck's insistence, she chose the less Mediterranean surname of Bancroft "because it sounded dignified".

Anne Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano; September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005) was an American actress.

Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award.

She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa (or Luisa) Italiano on September 17, 1931, in the Bronx, New York City, the middle of three daughters of Mildred (née Di Napoli), a telephone operator, and Michael G. Italiano, a dress pattern maker.

Both of her parents' surnames were toponymic.

Her parents were Italian immigrants from Southern Italy.

In an interview, she stated that her family was originally from Muro Lucano, in the province of Potenza, Basilicata, Kingdom of Italy.

She was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

Associated with the method acting technique, having studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Bancroft made her film debut in the noir thriller Don't Bother to Knock in 1952, and then appeared in 14 other films over the following five years.

Bancroft made her screen debut with a major role in the 1952 Marilyn Monroe vehicle Don't Bother to Knock.

She appeared in 14 films over the next five years, including Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953), Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), New York Confidential (1955) and Walk the Proud Land (1956).

In 1957, Bancroft was directed by Jacques Tourneur in a David Goodis adaptation, Nightfall. In 1958, she made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda (as the married man Gittel loves) in William Gibson's two-character play Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn.

For this role, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

In 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut with the play Two for the Seesaw, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

The following year she portrayed Anne Sullivan in the original Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Bancroft won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1960, again with playwright Gibson and director Penn, when she played Annie Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker.

Following her continued success on stage, Bancroft's film career was revived when she was cast in the acclaimed film adaptation of The Miracle Worker (1962) for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

She appeared in the 1962 film version of the play and won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft.

As Bancroft had returned to Broadway to star in Mother Courage and Her Children, Joan Crawford accepted the Oscar on her behalf and later presented the award to her in New York.

Her film career further progressed with Oscar nominated performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985).

Bancroft received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in The Pumpkin Eater (1964).

Bancroft co-starred as a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in the 1965 Broadway production of John Whiting's play The Devils.

Produced by Alexander H. Cohen and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, it ran for 63 performances.

Bancroft was widely known during this period for her role as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), for which she received a third Academy Award nomination.

In the film, she played an unhappily married woman who seduces the son of her husband's business partner, the much younger recent college graduate played by Dustin Hoffman.

In the movie, Hoffman's character later dates and falls in love with her daughter.

Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate; she said in several interviews that the role overshadowed her other work.

Despite her character becoming an archetype of the "older woman" role, Bancroft was only 36 years old at the time—just eight years older than her onscreen daughter Katharine Ross and six years older than Hoffman.

A CBS television special, Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man (1970), won Bancroft an Emmy Award for her singing and acting.

Bancroft is one of ten actors to have won both an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role (as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker), and one of very few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award.

This rare achievement is also known as the Triple Crown of Acting.

She followed that success with a second television special, Annie and the Hoods (1974), which was telecast on ABC and featured her husband Mel Brooks as a guest star.

She made an uncredited cameo in the film Blazing Saddles (1974), directed by Brooks.

Bancroft continued to act in the later half of her life, with prominent roles in The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), and Up at the Villa (2000).

She received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for the television films Broadway Bound (1992), Deep in My Heart (1999), for which she won, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003).

Bancroft died in 2005, at the age of 73, as a result of uterine cancer.

She was married to director, actor, and writer Mel Brooks, with whom she had a son, author Max Brooks.