Early life

Sarandon was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. She is the eldest of nine children born to Lenora Marie (née Criscione; b. 1923) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin (1917-1999), an advertising executive, television producer, and one-time nightclub singer. She has four brothers: Philip Jr., Terry (deceased May 19, 2016), Tim and O'Brian and four sisters: Meredith, Bonnie, Amanda and Missy. Her father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry, his English ancestors being from Hackney in London and his Welsh ancestors being from Bridgend. On her mother's side, she is of Italian descent, with ancestors from the regions of Tuscany and Sicily. Sarandon was raised Roman Catholic and attended Roman Catholic schools. She grew up in Edison, New Jersey, where she graduated from Edison High School in 1964. She then attended The Catholic University of America, from 1964 to 1968, and earned a BA in drama and worked with noted drama coach and master teacher, Father Gilbert V. Hartke.

Career

In 1969, Sarandon went to a casting call for the motion-picture Joe with her then husband Chris Sarandon. Although he did not get a part, she was cast in a major role of a disaffected teen who disappears into the seedy underworld (the film was released in the summer of 1970). Between 1970 and 1972, she appeared on the soap operas A World Apart and Search for Tomorrow, playing Patrice Kahlman and Sarah Fairbanks, respectively. In 1975, she appeared in the cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That same year, she also played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford. Her first controversial film appearance was in Pretty Baby in 1978, a prostitution drama directed by Louis Malle. On stage, she received Drama Desk Award nominations for her work in the Off-Broadway plays A Coupla White Chicks Siting Around Talking (1979) and Extremities (1982).

Sarandon's performance in Atlantic City (1980) earned her first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. In 1983 she co-starred in Tony Scott's The Hunger, a modern vampire story in which she had a lesbian sex scene with Catherine Deneuve. One of her biggest commercial successes came in 1987 with The Witches of Eastwick alongside Jack Nicholson, Cher, and Michelle Pfeiffer. However, Sarandon did not become a "household name" until her A-list breakthrough in the 1988 film Bull Durham, where she starred opposite Kevin Costner.

Sarandon received four more Academy Award nominations for Best Actress, in Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and The Client (1994), finally winning in 1995 for Dead Man Walking. She was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award in 1994.

Additional film performances include White Palace (1990), Little Women (1994), Stepmom (1998), Anywhere but Here (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Shall We Dance (2004), Alfie (2004), Romance & Cigarettes (2005), Elizabethtown (2005) and Enchanted (2007). Sarandon has appeared in two episodes of The Simpsons, once as herself ("Bart Has Two Mommies") and as a ballet teacher, "Homer vs. Patty and Selma". She appeared on Friends, Malcolm in the Middle, Mad TV, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle's Show, 30 Rock, Rescue Me and Mike & Molly.

Sarandon has contributed the narration to two dozen documentary films, many of which dealt with social and political issues. In addition she has served as the presenter on many installments of the PBS documentary series, Independent Lens. In 1999 and 2000 she hosted and presented Mythos, a series of lectures by the late American mythology professor Joseph Campbell. Sarandon also participates as a member of the Jury for the NYICFF, a local New York City Film Festival dedicated to screening films made for children between the ages of 3 and 18.

Sarandon joined the cast of the adaptation of The Lovely Bones, opposite Rachel Weisz, and appeared with her daughter, Eva Amurri, in Middle of Nowhere; both films were made in 2007. In June 2010 Sarandon joined the cast of the HBO pilot The Miraculous Year, as Patty Atwood, a Broadway director/choreographer. However, the series was not picked up. In 2012 Sarandon's audiobook performance of Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding was released at Audible.com. Sarandon was the voice actor for the character of Granny Rags, an eccentric and sinister old lady, in the stealth/action video game Dishonored, released in 2012.

Activism

Sarandon is noted for her active support of progressive and liberal political causes, ranging from donations to organizations such as EMILY's List, to participating in a 1983 delegation to Nicaragua sponsored by MADRE, an organization that promotes "social, environmental, and economic justice." Sarandon has expressed support for various human rights causes that are similar philosophically to ideas found among the left-wing supporters.

In 1995, Sarandon was one of many Hollywood actors, directors and writers interviewed for the documentary The Celluloid Closet, which looked at how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. In 1999, she was appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In that capacity, she has actively supported the organization's global advocacy, as well as the work of the Canadian UNICEF Committee.

During the 2000 election, Sarandon supported Ralph Nader's run for president, serving as a co-chair of the National Steering Committee of Nader 2000. During the 2004 election campaign, she withheld support for Nader's bid, being among several "Nader Raiders" who urged Nader to drop out and his voters offer their support for Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. After the 2004 election, Sarandon called for US elections to be monitored by international entities.

Sarandon and Robbins both took an early stance against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with Sarandon stating that she was firmly against war as a pre-emptive strike. Prior to a 2003 protest sponsored by the United for Peace and Justice coalition, she said that many Americans "do not want to risk their children or the children of Iraq". Sarandon was one of the first to appear in a series of political ads sponsored by TrueMajority, an organization established by Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream founder Ben Cohen. In 2003 she appeared in a "Love is Love is Love" commercial, which promoted the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. The next year, in 2004, she served on the advisory committee for 2004 Racism Watch, an activist group. She hosted a section of the Live 8 concert in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2005. In 2006, she was one of eight women selected to carry in the Olympic flag at the Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, in Turin, Italy.

Along with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, Sarandon took part in a 2006 Mother's Day protest, which was sponsored by Code Pink; she has expressed interest in portraying Sheehan in a film. In January 2007, she appeared with Robbins and Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. in support of a Congressional measure to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq.

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Sarandon and Tim Robbins campaigned for John Edwards in the New Hampshire communities of Hampton, Bedford and Dover. When asked at We Vote '08 Kickoff Party "What would Jesus do this primary season", Sarandon said, "I think Jesus would be very supportive of John Edwards."

Sarandon was appointed an FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 2010. "I am proud to help draw everyone’s attention to the very real and dramatic problems of hunger, food insecurity and extreme poverty," she said.

On March 12, 2011, Sarandon spoke before a crowd in Madison, Wisconsin protesting Governor Scott Walker and his Budget Repair Bill. On September 27, 2011, Sarandon spoke to reporters and interested parties at the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City. Her use of the term "Nazi" to describe Pope Benedict XVI on October 15, 2011, created controversy, generating complaints from Roman Catholic authorities, and the Anti-Defamation League, which called on Sarandon to apologize. Sarandon's mother Leonora Tomalin is a staunch Republican, a supporter of George W. Bush and the Iraq War.

As a result of her work in the movie, Dead Man Walking, in which she portrayed Sister Helen Prejean, Sarandon has become an advocate to end the death penalty and mass incarceration. She has joined the team of people fighting to save the life of Richard Glossip, a man who is on death row in Oklahoma. In May 2015, Sarandon launched a campaign with fundraising platform Represent.com to sell T-shirts to help finance the documentary Deep Run, the story of a poor North Carolina teen undergoing a gender transition.

In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she has made public her support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. On March 28, 2016 in an interview on All In with Chris Hayes, Sarandon indicated that she and other Sanders supporters might not support Hillary Clinton if Clinton is the Democratic nominee for President. She stated: "You know, some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately. If he gets in, then things will really explode." Hayes inquired as to whether it would be dangerous to allow Trump to become president, to which she replied: "If you think that it's pragmatic to shore up the status quo right now, then you're not in touch with the status quo".

Recognition

In 2006, Sarandon received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award. She was honored for her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, an advocate for victims of hunger and HIV/AIDS and a spokesperson for Heifer International.

Sarandon received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Stockholm International Film Festival, was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2010, and received the Outstanding Artistic Life Award for her Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at the 2011 Shanghai International Film Festival. In 2013, she was invited to inaugurate the 44th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. In 2015, Sarandon received the Goldene Kamera international lifetime achievement award.

Personal life

While in college, she met fellow student Chris Sarandon and the couple married on September 16, 1967. They divorced in 1979, but she retained the surname Sarandon as her stage name. She then had a relationship with Louis Malle, who directed her in Pretty Baby and Atlantic City. Sarandon had a relationship with musician David Bowie around the time they worked together on the film The Hunger (1983), which she describes as "a really interesting period." In the mid-1980s Sarandon dated Italian filmmaker Franco Amurri, and gave birth to their daughter, actress Eva Amurri, on March 15, 1985. From 1988 to 2009 Sarandon was in a relationship with actor Tim Robbins, whom she met while they were filming Bull Durham. They have two sons - Jack Henry (born May 15, 1989) and Miles Guthrie (born May 4, 1992). On March 1, 2014, the documentary Storied Streets, produced by Sarandon and directed by Jack Henry Robbins was released. The film deals with homelessness across the United States.

In 2006, Sarandon and ten relatives, including her then-partner, Tim Robbins and their son, Miles, travelled to Wales to trace her family's Welsh genealogy. Their journey was documented by the BBC Wales programme, Coming Home: Susan Sarandon. Much of the same research and content was featured in the American version of Who Do You Think You Are?. She also received the "Ragusani nel mondo" prize in 2006; her Sicilian roots are in Ragusa, Italy. Sarandon is the co-owner of New York ping-pong club SPiN, and its Toronto branch SPiN Toronto.

Sarandon split with her long-time partner, Robbins, in 2009. Following the dissolution of her relationship, she soon began a relationship with Jonathan Bricklin, son of Malcolm Bricklin. They operated the SPiN ping-pong lounges together. Sarandon and Bricklin broke up in 2015.

Sarandon is a vegetarian.

Filmography

Main article: Susan Sarandon filmography

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Susan Sarandon Charities

Susan Sarandon supports the following charitable causes: Peace, WWF, Autism, Marijuana Legalization, Environment, Children, Rape/Sexual Abuse, Women's Issues.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]