American actress whose career spanned seven decades, known for her wit, shapely figure and “chutzpah,” she appeared in numerous films. Winters received Best Supporting Actress Oscars for The Diary Of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch Of Blue (1965), and received Academy Award nominations for A Place in the Sun (1951) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Before films, she made her Broadway debut in 1941 with a film debut two years later. She first achieved stardom in 1947 with her breakout performance as the victim of insane actor Ronald Colman in George Cukor’s A Double Life. In addition, she did a lot of TV, including playing a grandmother on the TV sitcom, Roseanne, 1991-1996.
She was married four times. Her second husband, 1952-1954, was Vittorio Gassman and her third husband, 1957-1960, was Tony Franciosa. However, in her autobiography, Shelley, Also Known As Shirley (1980), she boasts of affairs with Burt Lancaster, Errol Flynn, William Holden and others. She wrote another biography nine years later entitled Shelley II.
Although she was hugely obese for a while, she was eventually able to lose some of the excess weight. Her weight was not the worst of her problems, however. Since 1995, at age 75, Winters was in the Betty Ford Clinic, Hazelton, and St. John’s Medical Center in Santa Monica, California trying to kick painkillers and tranquilizers.
The actress had a heart attack on 14 October 2005 in Los Angeles. She died of heart failure on 14 January 2006 in Beverly Hills, California, aged 85.
Link to Wikipedia biography