Patricia Neal (born Patsy Louise Neal; January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress whose career began during The Golden Age of Hollywood and extended across six decades.
Born in Kentucky and raised in Tennessee, Neal traveled north to study acting at Northwestern University, then began her career on the New York stage (earning a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in Another Part of the Forest) before moving to the screen. She made her film debut in 1949, opposite Ronald Reagan in John Loves Mary.
Neal had a number of memorable and acclaimed roles during her career, including such films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Face in the Crowd, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Hud, the latter earning her an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for a BAFTA for In Harm's Way, and received another Oscar nomination for The Subject Was Roses.
In her personal life, Neal had a brief affair with (then-married) Gary Cooper while they were making The Fountainhead together in 1947. She married the British author Roald Dahl in 1953, raising five children with him before they divorced 30 years later. In 1965, while pregnant with her fourth daughter Lucy, she suffered three cerebral aneurysms and lapsed into a three-week-long coma; after a grueling recovery process she not only re-learned to walk and talk but gave birth without complications.
While her big-screen career largely tapered off in the '70s, Neal continued to appear on television, primarily in made-for-TV movies. During that decade she received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story,note and earned Emmy Award nominations for that film along with Tail Gunner Joe and All Quiet on the Western Front. Her final performance was in the 2009 big-screen drama Flying By.
A lifelong smoker, Neal died of lung cancer at the age of 84.
Film roles on this wiki:
- John Loves Mary (1949) as Mary McKinley
- The Fountainhead (1949) as Dominique Francon
- The Hasty Heart (1949) as Sister Parker
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) as Helen Benson
- A Face in the Crowd (1957) as Marcia Jeffries
- Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) as Emily Eustace "2E" Failenson
- Hud (1963) as Alma Brown
- In Harm's Way (1965) as Lt. Maggie Haynes
- The Subject Was Roses (1968) as Nettie Cleary
- The Passage (1979) as Mrs. Bergson
- Ghost Story (1981) as Stella Hawthorne
- Cookie's Fortune (1999) as Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt
