Shirley Maclaine Talking Pictures

Actress, activist and bestselling writer,

Shirley MacLaine has been lighting up the screens

since her award-winning 1955 film debut

in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry.

She has been both an insider and an outsider in Hollywood,

part of the elite as Warren Beatty's big sister

and a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack Clan

but also on the edge thanks to her outspokenness on women's rights

and her belief in spiritualism and reincarnation.

Her first appearance on the BBC came in 1962

when she was interviewed by Peter Duvall

for the programme Picture Parade.

Miss MacLaine, in the last seven years,

you have been swept along on a fantastic wave of critical acclaim

into the very front ranks of world entertainers.

If I may quote just a single comment

which was made recently about you, it was simply this:

"I have only one point to make about Miss MacLaine. That is she is brilliant."

Now, does this kind of critical adulation embarrass you at all or does it inspire you?

If you said it to me in person, I think it would embarrass me, yes,

but to read it alone in my bedroom is something I enjoy very much.

With every film you make, you seem to attract a new adjective from the screenwriters.

The latest one is the word which I don't know. It's the word 'cook'.

Now, do you know what this word means? Are you embarrassed by it at all?

I don't know what it means.

I think it started in the United States maybe with a few articles, singular articles.

I had never heard the word before and people ask me what it means.

If you find out, I wish you'd tell me.

Well, I'm told it means 'zany' or 'unconventional'.

Would you say this was a correct description of you?

Well, part of me, yes but by no means all of me.

I can't be that all the time or I'd need to eat sugar all day.

I really don't know what it means.

I thought they meant I was a good cook for a while

until I realised I was pronouncing it wrong.

I don't know what the word means, no.

So, it's a word they have made up purely for you in America?

They made it up, yes.

I suppose press people need something with which the public can attach an image, you know.

And so out of a few very widely-read articles

came this impression of me as a cook, like the Clan, the same thing.

One man was responsible for having created this impression.

There's no such thing as the Clan.

I keep telling everybody that who asks me

and so do the other so-called members, which by the way, widely vary.

Sometimes, there are four of us, sometimes, there are 24.

-This is the Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis unit.

-That's right.

Sometimes, it's President Kennedy who shows up at parties.

So, as I say, you know, lots of times,

things are created through a need to capture the imagination of the public

and that is what has happened with this word 'cook', I suppose, and with the so-called Clan.

Your early professional career, of course, found you as a dancer in musical shows.

In fact, I believe you were making The Pajama Game

when you were discovered for the cinema,

and yet in the 13 films you've made, you have only made two which one can call musicals.

Now, why is this?

Well, it's difficult to pin it down to one reason.

I think Hollywood in the last 10 years

has ceased to make as many musicals as they used to, for lots of reasons.

One is a family who will spend 2.50 to go see a musical in a theatre

could stay at home and watch it

on Sunday night free of charge, you know.

There are not that many musicals being written.

I don't think the studios are that anxious to make them.

They're a terribly large investment

and, because of the investment being so large,

most of the foreign market now in the United States pictures

are 60%-40%, I believe, whereas 10 years ago,

it was maybe 40% foreign and 60% the United States

so that means then that Hollywood has to rely a great deal on box office business abroad.

Well, musicals are difficult to dub

in each respective language that the picture is playing in that country

and I think that's another reason.

Of course, I didn't really...

You see, I have an imbalance in my inner ear

and when I move or fly in a plane or ride in a car

or sometimes even take a short walk across the street, I get sick.

So when I dance, that happens and that's one reason why all my life,

I danced so often and so hard and so long every day.

I had to if I wanted to be a dancer and that's all I wanted to be when I was young.

So, it's a kind of physical disability, really, which has got in the way.

It stopped me or less. It was very uncomfortable for me.

I would really get sick. When I made Can-Can,

I began to rehearse maybe two months ahead of the shooting time

because I had to adjust myself to that much turning again

and I would rehearse it an hour and be sick the rest of the day

and then the next day, I would rehearse maybe two hours

and I worked up finally so that I could work nine and 10 and 11 hours.

Of all the films you have made, The Apartment,

certainly as far as this country is concerned, is the favourite.

Could you say whether this was your own particular favourite?

Did it give you the most pleasure to make?

No, it's not my favourite film. It's one of my favourites.

It may perhaps be the best film I have been in that has been shown to the public so far.

I have two that they haven't seen that I am just as fond of.

You know, when you're speaking of Billy Wilder, in my opinion,

he's a genius and Billy Wilder has great control

and he's the master of the ship on his pictures

so that you have to look to Billy and say, "He did it, I didn't,"

and when you have that kind of feeling about something,

it's difficult to be that much involved in anything but adoration for Billy Wilder.

He's fantastic.

27?

You may not realise it, Miss Kubelik,

but I am in the top 10 efficiency-wise

and this may be the day promotion-wise.

You're beginning to sound like Mr Kirkeby already.

Why not now that they're kicking me upstairs?

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

You know, you're the only one around here who ever takes his hat off in the elevator.

-Really?

-The characters you meet. Something happens to men in elevators.

It must be the change of altitude. The blood rushes to their head.

-I could tell you stories that...

-I'd love to hear them.

Maybe we could have lunch in the cafeteria sometime or some evening after work.

-27.

-Oh.

-I hope everything goes all right.

-I hope so.

They called me on a day like this, what with a cold and everything!

-How do I look?

-Fine. Wait.

Thank you! That's the first thing I ever noticed about you.

When you were still in the local elevator, you always wore a flower.

Good luck. And wipe your nose.

Over the next decade,

Shirley's roles in films like Gambit with Herbert Lom and Michael Caine,

Sweet Charity the musical

and her Golden Globe-winning appearance in Irma La Douce

earned her a reputation as one of cinema's finest comic actresses.

It's a reputation she lived up to on the small screen too.

Here, in a famously flirty encounter with Michael Parkinson from 1971.

What are the disadvantages, though, Shirley, do you think,

of being an internationally famous star?

You're the kind of person who runs away from it, aren't you?

-From being a star?

-Yes, from the acclaim.

Oh, no, I really don't mind that.

I don't get a great large charge out of it either

because I think the invasion of privacy is difficult to handle sometimes.

I do love anonymity.

I really do love to go to a market and melt into the shopping bags.

-Is it possible?

-Sure.

Oh, listen, those stars who tell you that they go to buy a loaf of bread

and they're surrounded by millions of zealots

are the ones who have spent three hours putting on lashes and leopard underwear.

LAUGHTER

"Oh, God, they won't leave me alone." That's crap.

LAUGHTER

I did an experiment once with a man who was doing this cover story or something

and he wanted to know that and I said, "Let's try this."

It was in New York, Fifth Avenue,

and I had on a suit and just little heels like that

and my hair was like it used to be in that pixie style.

Oh, lovely.

I look like a road company Susan Hayward this way, don't you think?

LAUGHTER

Anyway, we did this thing where I said,

"OK, for 10 blocks, I'm going to walk as though I'm a star

"and everybody will notice me

"because I won't feel amalgamated with the shoppers and the day

"and the sort of buses

"that all people really actually naturally do when they walk.

"I am a star."

So I walked that way for 10 blocks and it was murder.

I mean, the leopard underwear ladies were right.

Mm.

Then at something like 56th Street, I said,

"Now, just watch the change in attitude if I can swiftly make this transition in time,"

and I started becoming interested in the shoes in the windows

and the sizes of the dresses and the colour combinations and other people.

-Yes.

-Not one person noticed me.

That's fascinating. That's amazing.

It really does depend on the sort of personal vibrations

-you have about yourself.

-Yes.

Have you on the other hand, though, have you ever been guilty

of using the fact that you are an internationally-known star to your advantage?

-Have you ever come...?

-Yes, I make your show better.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

-I'll ask you that question again.

-LAUGHTER

Can you button your shirt up first?

LAUGHTER

Let's see your top, Michael.

For those of you who haven't got colour television,

-I'm bright pink now.

-Is that a wig or is that real?

It's real. Pull it.

There you go.

You see, people who write in and say, "Is it a wig?.."

Now they'll say, "We've always wondered, now we know."

If they're men, I always write back and say, "You're allowed one free pull."

Oh, my God! On what?!

LAUGHTER

Do you want to talk about birth control some more?

That story had a good punchline but it's not going to follow yours.

What shall we talk about now, Shirley MacLaine?

LAUGHTER

About what job you're going to have tomorrow.

LAUGHTER

Yes. Well...

The band think you're hilarious.

They've been hearing the same old stuff for so long.

-Well, we've got another five minutes.

-Is that all we've got?

What shall we talk about on here, then? We've talked about America. No, we haven't.

I tell you what I'd like to ask you.

You've been over here for some time now.

What are your feelings about this country,

about the mood of this country and how does it differ from America, do you think?

Because we always think we've got a special relationship with America, don't we?

And I reckon that we are more foreign to the Americans

-than Zulus are.

-Oh, boy, that's very true.

I'm doing a series here for Sir Lew Grade.

I'm interested in television now.

-I really think television is something else.

-Mm?

Maybe not after tonight but up to now.

LAUGHTER

And the thing that struck me in working with the British...

I make a lot of pictures here but never for, like, nine months

and very intimately involved.

And just because you speak the same language doesn't mean you have the same thoughts.

-Yes.

-Very, very profoundly, it hit me.

-Yes.

Because the assistant director will come to me and he'll say,

"Would you like a rehearsal?"

And I say, "No, I'm all right. I know the lines.

"Just tell him to go ahead and call me when you're ready."

He goes back down to the director and says, "She won't come."

LAUGHTER

He said, "I told her you're ready, she won't come."

Comes back up to me. "Would you like a rehearsal?"

I said, "I told you, you know. Why are you coming and asking me again?

"Do you mean the director wants me there for a rehearsal?

"Oh! Now I'll come!" I get down and he says, "Where were you?"

LAUGHTER

That sort of thing.

This is probably an unfair question because you really haven't...

It's a kind of...

If you're working over here as you are and working all the time,

it's a kind of phoney area that you are in.

You don't really get to know the problems of the people here.

What about the colour problem here, for instance?

Has it occurred to you that we might have something like the American situation?

Well, I think you are not facing it and that's why you can't compare the two.

I was amazed that Enoch Powell was as popular as he seemed to be,

that he actually was listened to.

-Mm.

-It's a big thing.

The conflict of colour in America is probably at the bottom

of why we feel so unhappy about ourselves.

I don't think you can stave off the problem for very much longer.

Can I finish by asking a question

that I have always wanted to ask a woman as beautiful as you?

You're always...

People write about you as being a sort of sexy and attractive woman.

Who do you think is the sexiest man in the world?

You.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

-Next to me.

-I'm next to you.

No, apart from me.

LAUGHTER

You're making a joke out of something I said offhandedly last week.

I told him I thought Zhou Enlai was the sexiest man.

-Zhou Enlai.

-How do you like that?

A 73-year-old Communist he's worried about.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

A year after that meeting, performing made way for politics.

Shirley became a fundraiser for

Democrat Senator George McGovern's presidential election battle

with Richard Nixon.

Later, in an interview with Vincent Hanna on the Tonight programme,

she spoke seriously about combining acting with activism

and the failure of Senator McGovern's campaign.

I think he didn't know how to manipulate,

to orchestrate his personality on television.

I think a great many people of good leadership quality

don't know how to do that.

And I think that's a shame because that is what's required.

If the people don't feel that you can communicate,

then you can't inspire them,

so it has become a world

where you have to know how to orchestrate the media.

What about 1976?

Do you say Ronald Reagan is an excellent communicator

doing well because of those very reasons?

Yes. Having been an actor,

having travelled on the road for General Electric,

having made so many speeches,

having tried out his personality in front of masses of people,

he knows how to do it.

There is no-one more cool or more capable when the red light goes on

than Ronald Reagan

and that's why she is a very dominant force in American politics today.

Are you saying then that...

..it's the communicators who will eventually succeed in politics?

That it's better to be a good communicator than a good politician?

I think so.

But I think the actors also,

we all have to be very sure of what we believe in, of what we mean.

Look, we are representatives of the emulation of human life, right?

If I'm asked to play a woman on welfare who lives with no husband

and the prospect of supporting six children and I have no income,

I've got to go study her.

I've got to find out what her problems are, what her tensions are,

what her frustrations are, what her joys are.

I've got to somehow find that dimension about her life

in order to portray her.

Therefore, I have to come to some human conclusion

at the end of that research.

I can't just walk away then, if I have any sensitivity at all,

and use her life as a role model for how I'm going to play a part

and get an award.

I have to somehow remember that that woman I just emulated

is still back there in the ghetto.

That's what makes actors social-political animals,

if they have any sensitivity or any intelligence.

Therefore, when someone asks me, "What about that part you played?"

it is a very short hop and skip from doing something about her problem.

Therefore, doing something about welfare.

Therefore, doing something about military spending.

Therefore, doing something about who's president.

Of course, some people might say that you're doing the easy thing.

You're taking all these serious topics and packaging them neatly

and putting them up on a stage where people can look at them

and say, "Super, I have fulfilled my social conscience now for the year.

-"I've satisfied my..."

-Oh, come on.

If that's not the most typical, cynically journalistic question

I have ever heard.

There is nothing tougher than to be up on that stage. It's terrifying.

For you, but what about the audience?

What do they get out of it? You can't expect them to go out...

I mean, many people will go and see you portray these roles,

they're not going to be more socially aware.

-No, but they had a good time.

-They'll be less socially aware.

No. When you are removed by...

human expression, it...

it makes you socially aware of human sensitivity.

That is the purpose of art in this world.

Art makes human beings human.

Politics makes human beings organised.

I like a little of both, yes, that's true.

But we need more humanity now.

That's why I'm going back into art.

That doesn't mean I'm out of politics.

I think politics is too important a subject

to be left up to the politicians.

One can't help think about the parallels between your own career

and that of Vanessa Redgrave's, who also is involved in politics.

Now, she seems to have, so far,

failed in getting across to the general public the message that...

..she wishes to. Where has she gone wrong, in your opinion?

She lost her sense of humour.

Explain.

I can't. I don't know why that happens.

I have experienced it and it is extremely painful,

so I sympathise with her and I identify with that problem.

I lost mine too for about three years.

So, I ate a lot, I got fat. I gained 25lb.

I didn't cut my hair, it was long and stringy.

You saw some pictures of me. I saw them. Running here...

I look like Peter Lorre, you know. INTERVIEWER SNIGGERS

I was running around happy to get any point across

when you're so damned sombre.

Have you any personal experience of this loss of sense of humour

on Vanessa's part?

Yes, she came...

I was playing in Las Vegas, which she thought was a colossal inconsistency,

why someone with my political views should play Las Vegas.

So, I went through explaining that this business of being on the stage

to me is bringing joy and wherever the stage is where I have the play

and that happens to be the show business capital

in America right now, not Broadway.

So, she came up.

She was there to have a political discussion about a new...

..group of people she was organising.

No, she didn't want to see my show.

No, she didn't want to discuss how her life was then,

she didn't want to discuss anything that had to do with...

..the reality of the world in its dimension

that has some jokes attached to it.

She wanted to talk about only what was on her mind.

And she did it sombrely and she did it with very complicated rhetoric

that frankly, I didn't understand.

I mean, I really didn't know what she was saying and I said to her,

"Hey, is this how you sit down in the pub and talk to some worker?"

So, we talked for about 5 or 6 hours,

mostly me trying to understand and her going on.

But when we then did begin to discuss her role

in a play she was doing downtown,

her eyes lit up, her face changed, her smile just beamed,

her teeth showed and her whole demeanour became alive.

And I thought, "Now, hmm."

If she could get that into the political message

she's trying to say, somehow combine these two things

so that the seriousness of breaking the omelette

to make the egg of the revolution -

breaking the egg to make the omelette of the revolution

was not quite so...

..doom-making...

..people would listen a little bit closer.

I mean, it's when you make any speech, you've got to tell some jokes first

and then they'll listen to the serious part.

So, I say it's essentially a theatrical mistake that she's making,

very likely because she feels over-privileged

to have had such a fabulous background.

Someone like me who came from nobody,

I don't feel that I have to pay those dues of guilt, you see?

I feel that I earned and therefore, I'm going to use it.

In 1975, MacLaine hadn't acted in a film for three years.

Instead, she had directed, written and produced a documentary

about the women in China.

It was called The Other Half Of The Sky

and promoting it meant another conversation

with her old sparring partner Michael Parkinson.

APPLAUSE

Oh, that was smashing.

-You know, we should explain why you're doing that.

-You explain.

HE CHUCKLES

Because the last time Shirley was on my program,

I had a button missing on my shirt

and she poked her forefinger into my belly button

as I was trying to talk about the Nixon administration.

Needless to say, it did more for me

than it did the Nixon administration.

It was the best poke you had all year, wasn't it?

LAUGHTER

All right, enough of that.

He walked over to me earlier and he said,

"Why does this always happen? I get a nosebleed."

I said, "Whenever you come near me, you get a nosebleed."

-That's right.

-It's the altitude.

-LAUGHTER

-I mention, in fact, that...

I mentioned...

-OK.

-What's the matter?

I just wondered where your finger had been.

LAUGHTER

If you want to do one of those kind of interviews...

You're very disconcerting, Shirley MacLaine, you know that?

-Yeah.

-Yeah. Deliberately so.

-No.

-No. Just you are normally provocative?

Just your regular middle-class girl.

I find that very hard to believe, indeed I do.

I mentioned in the introduction, in fact, that your name is Beaty.

Why, in fact, did you choose the name MacLaine

when you went on your career as a film star?

Shirley MacLaine Beaty is my name.

Yes, that's your mother's name, I know. But why not Shirley Beaty?

I mean, your brother didn't do bad with it, did he?

He had to change the spelling to do good with it.

-Really?

-Yeah.

It was B-E-A-T-Y and people called me 'Beety', 'Be-atty',

'Beauty', 'Beastly'.

LAUGHTER

I didn't like the last, so I took my middle name.

What sort of background was it that you came from?

What sort of parents did you have?

Mother was Canadian, and Dad was

a small-town, middle-class, American WASP, you know.

-Really?

-Yeah. White American, Southern Protestant.

With all that's intended to follow that,

politically and that sort of thing?

Yeah. That's just so long and complicated, Michael, and...

..and it was inspirational to get out of, you know.

I mean, have you changed him?

I mean, has daughter changed father in his point of view?

Because, I mean, that's the last thing you are, isn't it?

Yeah. I don't know if I have. I think I've made a couple of stabs at it.

When...

He always...he always wondered

why I went around the world caring, you know.

He used to call me a missionary in a skirt.

-In a kind of derogatory sense?

-Yes.

In a pejorative sense, as though the best way to conduct one's life

was to never upset the apple cart, you know.

And to observe the status quo and not make any noise

because it upsets the neighbours.

Well, you've made a lot of noise

and you've upset a lot of people in your career.

Have you always done this or is it something that came

after you'd made it in Hollywood as a film star?

I think I always did because very early on when I was really little...

..Oh, 1.5 or 2 years old, I remember feeling...

Because they tell me to always be quiet, I'm going to, "Bleurgh!"

LAUGHTER You know?

They make...they make people...

They inspire you to be radical. They inspire you to be...

..deviant...

when they want you to conform.

But it must have been very difficult for you when you were in Hollywood

because I would think of all societies,

Hollywood is the most conformist, isn't it, in that sense?

No, not really. I think that's a...

I think it's a combination of things.

Hollywood is looking for the individual who can break through

and become a star and sell their product as a result of it.

After you become a star and sell their product,

they want you to conform to making the money they want to make.

-Hmm.

-Yes.

But it is a mixture of art and industry.

But did you always want to be a film star?

-Was that your ambition as a kid?

-Oh, no, no.

-No?

-Mm-mm.

I...I never really cared about being famous or being recognised anyway.

All I wanted to do was, "Bleurgh!"

-Express myself.

-Well, what does 'bleurgh' mean?

-I mean...

-It means that.

It means when you are in a conformist environment,

you feel you have to bust your seams.

That is another way of saying I wanted to express myself,

whether it was in dancing, which is what I did originally,

and then in musical comedy. And then I got more specific with acting.

And then in writing. And then finally, I think, in...

in political...

..and social concern.

It is all part of the same thing.

If you study a person's life like my one,

it's not really inconsistent with the other.

No, right, fine. I accept that

and we'll sort of take in a few spokes of that wheel as we go along.

But I'm more interested in what started you off on this road.

Because the road that you started off on as a performer...

-As a dancer, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

So, was there one person who as a child you looked at and said,

"Ah, that's what I want to be"?

No, uh-uh.

You know, I come also from a background of...

..rather abstract prejudice, you know.

I was born in the South in a state that is the Mason-Dixon Line,

the state of five presidents,

so it is very politically and socially aware,

but at the same time won't let black people in the living room, you know?

So, I was aware early in my life that something was wrong with that,

was concerning, yet at the same time

I was stimulated to be culturally sophisticated

and the conflict bothered me.

I think that's why, if you are sensitive or intelligent at all,

you begin to pick up on that and say,

"Well, now, what is it that's troubling me?"

Because the negative emotion of prejudice is not easy to stand.

But when you had these thoughts in Hollywood...

I mean, you see, I don't think that these thoughts

ever get off the ground with the majority of people

you must have worked with in Hollywood.

I mean, you must have been a complete outsider

feeling like this in the situation you were in.

I think you're probably right about that, yeah.

I think people in Hollywood in the main

are concerned with not upsetting the apple cart of their success

or whatever their box office dictates.

But nonetheless, for all this, you were a star. You are a star.

And you allowed yourself, no doubt -

and I know because it's in your book -

to be pampered and treated like some sort of shampooed poodle.

I mean, tell them what it was like to be a star when you were there.

My make-up man used to have to knock me down and tackle me to put the make-up on me.

LAUGHTER I didn't like being pampered, really.

But what was it like, though, the system at that time?

What was the set-up like of stardom? What did it being a star mean?

Well, you were expected to lie back and enjoy it, I suppose.

But that is part of the seduction.

That's part of the exercise of believing your own myth.

You're not anybody special,

except that you excel in the art of emulating human life.

That's where the specialty comes from.

The fact that you make a lot of money or that you're privileged

or that people should treat you with any more special attention

than anyone else

is what makes it very difficult to adjust to success.

Success is so much tougher to adjust to than struggle.

Failure is tough too, but struggle is where the real happiness lies.

And when all of us...

You know, I like Hollywood.

I'm not one of those who really knocks it and means it.

There's a lot about it that I would knock

and be seriously concerned with and then...

What would you knock about it?

Well, for example...

..to cast pictures with stars

according to the box office receipts of their last pictures is silly.

Some of the finest actors in the world can't get work for two or three years

-because their last picture didn't do well. That's really awful.

-Hmm.

-That's not commensurate with good art or good industry.

-Hmm.

And the real secret, it seems to me,

is to find the right subject matter, the right screenplay,

and have the courage to cast that person,

whether he or she is a star or not, in it

-and then you'll make yourself a star.

-Hmm.

Do you find that that problem, the problem of being

the artist in Hollywood the way you just specified,

all the more difficult because you are a woman?

In this sense that, you know, Hollywood is run by men.

-In the main, the directors in Hollywood are men.

-They are.

It's really interesting now, Michael, what is going on.

The parts for women don't exist, you might have noticed.

Robert Redford is playing all our parts.

LAUGHTER

He is prettier than a lot of us too so I don't begrudge him that but...

I started to figure that out the other day.

I was walking on the beach in Malibu

and I thought, "What on Earth is really going on here?"

And then I remembered that in the old days,

the old days meaning the '40s and '50s when the Hays Office

was the censorship board

and you had Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn

playing women judges, women politicians, women mayors,

women scientists, blah, blah.

You were not allowed to play a love scene in the bedroom

with a double bed. It had to be two twin beds,

even if the couple was married and regardless of what the scene was,

one of the people had to have one foot on the floor.

I could never figure out what difference that made. Could you?

You could figure out something to do with that that'd be really kinky.

That's right.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

So what happened was since they couldn't play

any real good sexy love scenes,

they had to resort to giving women these parts

that were sensational in real life.

The Hays Office was abolished in the name of more liberal sexual attitudes

and the rating system came in.

Well, now, because men were running the studios,

men were writing the scripts and men were the directors,

they put us back in the bedroom,

and we haven't been judges or politicians or mayors since.

We can't get out of the bedroom now.

-Why are you crying?

-It sounds a great life though.

I don't know what you're bothered about.

I'd stay in Hollywood forever if that were the case.

12 months after that interview,

Shirley took on her first acting role for four years which

earned her her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

The film, The Turning Point, co-starred Anne Bancroft

and focused on very familiar territory for Shirley -

the world of ballet.

I think a very eloquent sense of masochism is extremely important

in the ballet. I mean, you have no idea how much it hurts.

I was a ballerina for...

Since I was two and I danced every day for eight hours a day.

It was everything to me.

More important than my schooling,

more important than my social sense, more importance than any man or boy

when I was young that I was attracted to or fell in love with.

It was more important than anything.

And then I realised how all-consuming ballet is.

You haven't got time not to hurt. You haven't got time to have a good time.

Talking of hurting, you once danced with a broken ankle. Is that right?

-I did.

-Can you tell us about that?

Well, that was my first experience

with self-motivated mind over matter.

I was 16, about 16.

It was before the performance at Constitution Hall in Washington DC.

We were dancing Cinderella and I was playing the fairy godmother.

I was warming up before the performance,

doing some grand jetes and some tour jetes and stuff

around the stage and I fell and broke it.

-During the overture.

-You didn't know you'd broken it?

Well, what happened was immediately my sense of the fact that that

had occurred and the audience was there and the overture

was almost finished and what on Earth were we going to do?

It's like I understand some of the soldiers felt in the war.

They didn't realise their leg had been shot off

until after the battle was over.

I simply got up on pointe

and I remember the bone sticking through the toe shoe ribbon.

I danced the whole thing completely numb with no anaesthetic, nothing.

And when it was over, of course I went to bed for three months.

But I had psyched myself into having to do it.

Good girl.

Deedee.

Deedee.

-I'm sick to death of your jealousy and resentment.

-So am I.

-Then stop blaming your goddamn life on me. You picked it.

-You picked it!

You took away my choice. You never let me find out if I was good enough.

You aren't. You weren't good enough and you knew it.

-That's why you married Wayne.

-I loved Wayne.

-So much so that you said to hell with your career?

-Yes.

-And then got pregnant to prove that you meant it.

-Yes.

Oh, don't lie to me, lie to yourself.

You got married because you knew you were second rate.

And you got pregnant because Wayne was a ballet dancer

and in those days that meant queer so you had to prove

-he was a man so you had a baby.

-That is a goddamn lie!

That's the goddamn truth and you know it.

So you must have been very strongly motivated by the script

or the idea to come back after four years.

What motivated me was it was the only good script for women

-I had read in four years.

-Particularly for women?

Do you still think women get a raw deal in the movies?

There is no question about it.

It's even become close to restraint of trade.

It really has. Even now.

And we have Julia, Looking For Mr Goodbar, Turning Point,

3 Women, Unmarried Woman. We have five very good films,

very good films for women but still you see we are starring together.

They are doing the Paul Newman - Robert Redford routine with us now.

They are not making us scripts and stories where we can relate to men.

They're still not doing love stories. Which is a shame.

Do you think that is because of an unconscious down on women

or just because men have been running the industry for so long

they don't notice?

I don't think they understand what has happened...

..in the last five or six years.

The advent of women's liberation,

the impact of women's liberation in the United States

is very, very strong.

And it has permeated down through entire society.

It hasn't quite gotten to Hollywood. It's a provincial town.

But you haven't done any pictures for four years. The Turning Point is your first in four years.

Is that a conscious decision? You wanted to get away from it?

Or do you now feel you'd like to go back to the movies?

Oh, yeah. Oh, I don't want to be just a movie star like I used to be

when I was making two and a half or three films a year.

It's a very debilitating experience to sit around your house in Bel-Air

with your Jaguar and your swimming pool

and you go to soundstage 27 at six o'clock in the morning

and get out at seven o'clock at night

and life does not exist when you live for film.

On the other hand, you say that when you're working on a film

the crew becomes a sort of family and you get very intimate with them.

-Once year is what I'm saying.

-Yes.

But even though you're producing mediocre movies, it is

still the experience and the time you've spent with them, so you say.

That's lovely, it's wonderful.

I get very comfortable and almost sleepy.

It's kind of an embryonic environment.

It's warm, everyone loves you,

everyone is there to take care of you.

You feel pampered, you know no one is going to let you

look bad or be hurt. It's like having 39 mothers.

Talking about looking bad, I hope you won't mind me saying so

but you look a great deal better in real life

than sometimes you do on the screen.

In The Turning Point you let yourself rather bravely appear

slatternly and down at heel.

Sure. I had to gain 15lb for it.

I had to look as though I had fallen apart a little bit

because that is what she had done. Sure.

I didn't like doing that coming back after four years

because they might think I look like that, you know.

But that's the way you get awards, so it's OK.

As it turned out, Shirley might have been right on that point.

She finally won a Best Actress Oscar for 1983's Terms Of Endearment

and then her fourth Best Actress Golden Globe

for 1988's Madame Sousatzka.

Here she is talking about both films in a conversation with Terry Wogan.

Madame Sousatzka, which is your latest triumph

-chosen for the Royal Premiere.

-Mmm.

Can you tell us what it is about

apart from being difficult to pronounce?

Yeah, oh, gosh.

I have to do like six-month's work in three minutes here.

Well, make it a minute.

It is the story of a teacher who is very imperious

and bizarre and eccentric.

It is a part and a half.

She is tyrannical, she is vulnerable, she's funny, she's cruel,

she's very broad stroked, she's possessive, she's proprietary,

she is loving, she's one wonderful teacher, a bit of a fraud,

suffers from mixed motives

and it is one of the best grand dame parts ever written,

so I just decided to do it and to commit to this old lady.

I'm going to try and digest that now.

Can we have a look at just a smidgen of Madame Sousatzka

while we're taking that in?

You move around far too much, Mr Virtuoso.

Perfect scales have no beginning and no end.

Each note is a smooth and as even as these beads, you see.

Mm-hm.

Forget the fingers, don't think for one moment

that you play with your fingers. If he thought about his fingers

he would be at the bottom of the ocean never to be heard from again.

What are these 10 poor little worms? No!

This is where the music comes from, from the abdomen

and it rises higher and higher from the depths of your very soul.

Higher and higher from the deepest instincts

to the height of reason until it reaches here, you see?

Now begin. Begin.

HE PLAYS SCALE

That's it, play. Let it play.

Ebb and flow, each note, smooth and even. That's it.

He begins to play...

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

You read the book,

that's where you formed your desire to play the part, was it?

No, I read the script first and then I read the book.

The script was quite different than the book.

Was your portrayal based on any character that you had met

-or that you knew?

-Mm-hm. Several ballet teachers that I had

when I was growing up when I was young.

Did they have the occasional grim desire

which she effects all the time?

Oh, yes, that's the way a classical teacher

effects inspiration, through tyranny.

And I was so much into the ballet I almost went into ballet theatre.

I had a teacher like Sousatzka,

by the way, who threw me across the room by my ear on the day that

I had my ears pierced. I'll never forget that.

And I did step right from then on.

I was one she didn't crush.

See, you find out what you're made of by that kind of challenge.

But the day that I woke up in the ballet

and realised that I didn't know who was president.

I didn't know anything except variations, classical music

and how to tie my toe shoes.

That's when I gave up the ballet and I went into musical comedy instead.

You are a woman of many interests.

You've written several very successful books. Do you...

Those seminars that you conduct,

do you still conduct those seminars in heightening consciousness, etc?

No, I haven't been doing it because I've been going back to

moviemaking, but I wrote a book that grew out of the seminars

that will be out in April

and I did a video cassette tape based really,

and the seminars were based really on techniques of stress reduction.

We're living in such a stressed out society in America that people were

really desperate to know about some rather pragmatic techniques to...

-To relax.

-To relax and to be more peaceful within.

My book is called Going Within.

-And where does it come from?

-The power that you have?

-Yeah.

Probably at the end of the day I would say belief in oneself.

When I learned to really feel that sense, I loved my work more.

I loved my relationships more.

Talking of relationships, the character of Madame Sousatzka

is a very possessive one, and five years ago

you won the Oscar for the part of Aurora in Terms of Endearment.

We'll just have a little look at that

then and draw a parallel between the two.

THEY LAUGH

Garrett.

No, no. You don't need outsiders now.

-No outsiders?

-See ya later.

-Please come.

Emma, this is Garrett.

Oh, pleasure to meet you. I've heard so much about you.

Yes, well, your mother's really been looking forward to this too.

So, go ahead.

Anything wrong, Garrett?

No.

It was very nice to have met you.

Must be nice to be home, huh?

Oh, it's great. It's great.

I'll be over later.

They're probably tired anyway and will get to sleep early

-and I'd like to get to bed early.

-Grandma! Grandma!

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

You're laughing.

When we were just watching that little bit,

you were obviously amused by it. Bring back all sorts of memories?

I love Jack Nicholson.

He has been my role model, frankly.

Because he had such courage to take parts.

Look at that with his potbelly.

It's a good man. Oh, there's nothing wrong with that.

Is that what inspired you to put on the weight for Madame Sousatzka?

No, hardly, but I loved his courage.

I loved his comedic ability to be old and love it.

We've all got to get old, haven't we? There's no point hating it.

Oh, no. It's wonderful to enjoy being experienced and wise.

Today, as well as experience and wisdom, Shirley MacLaine

still has that ever-present aura of stardom.

Her recent appearances in Downton Abbey underlying the fact that

she remains one of the best loved, most commanding

and, yes, kooky characters in Hollywood.