Anna Maria Louisa Italiano (September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005), known professionally as Anne Bancroft, was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.

After her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role in The Miracle Worker (1962) as the teacher of teenage Helen Keller, reprising her role in the Broadway stage play. She won both an Oscar for her work in the film, and a Tony for the same role in the play. On Broadway in 1965, she played a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in John Whiting's play The Devils, based on the Aldous Huxley novel The Devils of Loudun.

She became best known as the seductress, Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate (1967), a role that she later stated had come to overshadow all her other work.

Bancroft received several other Oscar nominations and continued in lead roles until the late 1980s. She played a ballet dancer in The Turning Point (1977), and in Agnes of God she played the mother superior of a convent who clashes with a psychiatrist played by Jane Fonda over dealings with a troubled young novice nun played by Meg Tilly. She appeared in a few movies directed or produced by her second husband, comedian Mel Brooks, including The Elephant Man (a straight drama produced by Brooks) and the comedies To Be or Not to Be, and in a smaller role Dracula: Dead and Loving It (both directed by Brooks).

In the 1990s she returned to supporting roles in films, but continued to play lead roles in television films. She received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003), as well as an Emmy nomination for 2001's Haven.

Bancroft died of uterine cancer at the age of 73 in 2005. She was survived by her mother, sisters, husband and son.

Spouses

Martin May (m. 1953; div. 1957)
Mel Brooks (m. 1964)

Child Max Brooks

Early life

Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in The Bronx, New York, the middle of three daughters of Mildred (née DiNapoli; 1908–2010), a telephone operator, and Michael G. Italiano (1905–2001), a dress pattern maker.

Bancroft's parents were both children of Italian immigrants. In an interview she claimed her family was originally from Muro Lucano, in the province of Potenza. She was brought up Catholic. She graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx in 1948, and attended HB Studio, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Actors Studio, and the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women at the University of California, Los Angeles. After appearing in a number of live television dramas under the name Anne Marno, she was told to change her surname for her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock.

Career

In 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda (as the married man Gittel loves) in William Gibson's two-character play Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn. For Gittel, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. (Though her role was quite equal to Fonda's, he, an established film actor, was the star, and so she was eligible in the featured category.)

She subsequently won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1960, again with playwright Gibson and director Penn, when she played Annie Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker. She took the latter role to Hollywood, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft in the 1962 film version of the play. She had returned to Broadway to star in Mother Courage and Her Children, so Joan Crawford accepted Bancroft's Oscar on her behalf, and later presented the award to her in New York. Bancroft is one of the few actors to have won an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role. Bancroft co-starred as a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in the 1965 Broadway production of John Whiting's play The Devils. Produced by Alexander H. Cohen and directed by Michael Cacoyannis, it ran for 63 performances.

Bancroft received a second Academy Award nomination in 1965 for her performance in The Pumpkin Eater. Her best-known role during this period was Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), for which she received a third Academy Award nomination. In the film, she played an unhappily married woman who seduces a family friend, the much younger recent college graduate played by Dustin Hoffman. In the movie, Hoffman's character later dates and falls in love with her daughter. Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate; she stated in several interviews that the role overshadowed all of her other work. Despite her character becoming an archetype of the "older woman" role, Bancroft was only six years older than Hoffman.

A CBS television special, Annie: the Women in the Life of a Man (1970), won Bancroft an Emmy Award for her singing and acting. Bancroft is one of very few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award. She followed that success with a second television special, Annie and The Hoods (1974), which was telecast on ABC and featured her husband Mel Brooks as a guest star. She made an uncredited cameo in the film Blazing Saddles (1974), directed by Brooks. She received a fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance in The Turning Point (1977) opposite Shirley MacLaine, and a fifth nomination for her performance in Agnes of God (1985) opposite Jane Fonda.

Bancroft made her debut as a screenwriter and director in Fatso (1980), in which she starred along with Dom DeLuise. Bancroft was also the original choice to play Joan Crawford in the film Mommie Dearest (1981), but backed out at the eleventh hour, and was replaced by Faye Dunaway. She was also a front-runner for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but declined in order to act in the remake of To Be or Not to Be (1983), with her husband Mel Brooks.

During the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, Bancroft took supporting roles in a number of films in which she co-starred with major film stars, including Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) with Nicolas Cage; Love Potion No. 9 (1992) with Sandra Bullock; Malice (1993) with Nicole Kidman; Point of No Return (1993) with Bridget Fonda; Home for the Holidays (1995) with Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Jodie Foster; How to Make an American Quilt (1995) with Winona Ryder, G.I. Jane (1997) with Demi Moore; Great Expectations (1998) with Gwyneth Paltrow; Keeping the Faith (2000) with Ben Stiller; and Heartbreakers (2001) with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman. She also lent her voice to the animated film Antz (1998) which also featured performances from Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone, and Woody Allen.

Bancroft also starred in several television movies and miniseries, receiving six Emmy Award nominations (winning twice), eight Golden Globe nominations (winning twice), and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her final appearance was as herself in a 2004 episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Her last project was the animated feature Delgo, released posthumously in 2008.

She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6368 Hollywood Boulevard, for her work in television. At the time of her star's installation (1960), she had recently appeared in several TV series. Bancroft is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1992.

Marriage and family

Bancroft was married to Martin May from July 1, 1953, to February 13, 1957. They had no children.

In 1961, Bancroft met Mel Brooks at a rehearsal for the Perry Como variety show. Bancroft and Brooks married on August 5, 1964, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau near New York City Hall and remained married until her death. In 1972 Bancroft gave birth to her only child, Maximillian "Max" Brooks.

They were seen three times on the screen together: once dancing a tango in Brooks's Silent Movie (1976); in his remake of To Be or Not to Be (1983); and in the episode entitled "Opening Night" (2004) of the HBO show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. They were also in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), but never appeared together. Brooks produced the film The Elephant Man (1980), in which Bancroft acted. He also was executive-producer for the film 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) in which she starred. Both Brooks and Bancroft appeared in season six of The Simpsons. According to the DVD commentary, when Bancroft came to record her lines for the episode "Fear of Flying", the Simpsons writers asked if Brooks had come with her (which he had); she joked, "I can't get rid of him!"

In 2010, Brooks credited Bancroft as being the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theatre, citing an early meeting as "From that day, until her death on June 5, 2005, we were glued together."

In April 2005, two months before her death, Bancroft became a grandmother when her daughter-in-law Michelle gave birth to a boy, Henry Michael Brooks.

Death

Anne Bancroft died, age 73, of uterine cancer on June 6, 2005, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Her death surprised many, even some of her friends. She was intensely private and had not released details of her illness. She is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, near her parents, Mildred (who died in April 2010, five years after Anne) and Michael Italiano. A white marble monument with a weeping angel adorns her grave. Her last film, Delgo, was dedicated to her memory.