Famous actress Ali MacGraw, was born in 1st of April, 1939, in Pound Ridge, New York. Her both parents were artists. Her father had some mental problems, related with his childhood.
“Daddy was frightened and really, really angry. He never forgave his real parents for giving him up,” Ali stated once.
As they were a poor family, Ali was staying in the same room with her brother, Richard Jr. They were also sharing their house with an old couple.
“There were no doors; we shared the kitchen and bathroom with them,” Ali said. “It was utter lack of privacy. It was horrible.”
“On good days he was great, but on bad days he was horrendous,” Ali said of her father, who was struggling with life. “Daddy would beat my brother up, badly. I was witness to it, and it was terrible.”
Ali went to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, as she wanted to become an artist like her parents. She was 22 when she got her first job as an assistant editor at Harper’s Bazaar.
“It was ‘Girl! Get me a pencil!’,” Ali described her job. Few months later, fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky hired her as a stylist.
“I don’t know where she got this work ethic, but Ali would come in at eight a.m., and many times I’d come back at one in the morning and she would still be doing things for the next day,” Ruth Ansel said.
As she was a beautiful girl, it was not hard for her to be noticed by movie makers. After a role in “A Lovely Way to Die”, she starred in “Goodbye, Columbus.” she received a Golden Globe after her role.
Later, as she starred in “Love Story,” as Jenny, with Ryan O’Neal, she received an Academy Award nomination. She also received her second Golden Globe after the movie.
Robert Evans, producer of the movie, fell in love with her, and they married in 1969. Two years later, their son Josh Evans was born.
For the movie “The Getaway,” Steve McQueen visited her in her home and asked her the role in the movie. “I looked in those blue eyes, and my knees started knocking,” MacGraw recalled. “I became obsessed.”
As they had an affair, she left Evans and started to live with McQueen and her son Josh.
(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
“Steve was this very original, principled guy who didn’t seem to be part of the system, and I loved that,” Ali shared.
But McQueen was a problematic man who had no trust against woman after his mother left him when he was 14. “I couldn’t even go to art class because Steve expected his ‘old lady’ to be there every night with dinner on the table,” Ali said.
“Steve’s idea of hot was not me. He liked blond bimbos, and they were always around.”
That led Ali MacGraw to her problems with drugs and alcohol. After she went to the set of “Convoy,” as she was drunk and high, she decided to quit it.
“It’s brutal for women,” Ali said when she returned to the industry in 70s. “I don’t think there’s a woman over 40 who’s ever been conspicuously in the spotlight who doesn’t get sick of the kind of questioning the media lays on you, the fashion industry, all of it. It’s cruel.”
“The worst stuff happened when I drank,” the actress said. “I lost my judgment; I fancied other women’s husbands.”
In 1993, MacGraw lost her home in California after a wildfire burned it down. Then she moved to Los Angeles. “I live in a little village north of Santa Fe, New Mexico called Tesuque,” MacGraw shared last year.
She returned to acting in 2006, and reunited with Ryan O’Neal in the Broadway adaptation of Festen.
“One of the lucky things for someone my age is that I’m open and curious,” MacGraw said. “There’s not just one thing I love to do and feel bereft if I can’t. But I know that I’m not happy when I’m not doing something creative.”
What do you think? Let us know.