37 Facts About Anne Bancroft

Anne Bancroft is one of 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

Anne Bancroft received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for the television films Broadway Bound, Deep in My Heart, for which she won, and The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone.

Anne Bancroft died in 2005, at the age of 73, as a result of uterine cancer.

Anne Bancroft was married to director, actor, and writer Mel Brooks, with whom she had a son, author Max Brooks.

Anne Bancroft was born Anna Maria Luisa Italiano on September 17,1931 in the Bronx, New York, the middle of three daughters of Mildred Carmela, a telephone operator, and Michael Gregory Italiano, a dress pattern maker.

Anne Bancroft's parents were children of Italian immigrants from Muro Lucano, Basilicata.

Anne Bancroft then 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.

Anne Bancroft made her screen debut with a major role in the 1952 Marilyn Monroe-led psychological thriller Don't Bother to Knock.

Anne Bancroft appeared in 14 films over the next five years, including Treasure of the Golden Condor, Gorilla at Large, Demetrius and the Gladiators, New York Confidential and Walk the Proud Land.

In 1957, Anne Bancroft was directed by Jacques Tourneur in a David Goodis adaptation, Nightfall.

Anne Bancroft won the Tony Award for Best 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.

Anne Bancroft reprised her role in the 1962 film and won the Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft.

Anne Bancroft co-starred as a medieval nun obsessed with a priest in the 1965 Broadway production of John Whiting's play The Devils.

Anne Bancroft received a second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Pumpkin Eater.

Anne Bancroft achieved stardom when she played the starring role as Mrs Robinson in the romantic comedy-drama The Graduate.

Anne Bancroft was ambivalent about her appearance in The Graduate; she said in several interviews that the role overshadowed her other work.

Anne Bancroft is one of ten actors to have won both an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role, and one of very few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award.

Anne Bancroft followed that success with a second television special, Annie and the Hoods, which was telecast on ABC and featured her husband Mel Brooks as a guest star.

Anne Bancroft made an uncredited cameo in the film Blazing Saddles, directed by Brooks.

Anne Bancroft made a career comeback with the ballet drama The Turning Point, followed by the neo-noir mystery film Agnes of God, which earned her two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Anne Bancroft made her debut as a screenwriter and director in Fatso, in which she starred with Dom DeLuise.

Anne Bancroft was the original choice to play Joan Crawford in the film Mommie Dearest, but backed out and was replaced by Faye Dunaway.

Anne Bancroft was a front-runner for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment, but declined so that she could act in the remake of To Be or Not to Be with Brooks.

Anne Bancroft lent her voice to the animated film Antz.

Anne Bancroft starred in several television movies and miniseries, receiving six Emmy Award nominations, eight Golden Globe nominations and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Anne Bancroft was cast in Spanglish later in the year, but had to bow out due to a medical emergency.

Anne Bancroft received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6368 Hollywood Boulevard for her work in television.

Anne Bancroft was a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1992.

Anne Bancroft had previously been engaged to actor John Ericson in 1951.

In 1961, Anne Bancroft met Mel Brooks at a rehearsal for Perry Como's variety show Kraft Music Hall.

Anne Bancroft worked with her husband three times on the screen: dancing a tango in Brooks's Silent Movie, in his remake of To Be or Not to Be and in the episode titled "Opening Night" of the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Anne Bancroft was executive producer for the film 84 Charing Cross Road in which she starred.

Anne Bancroft said that, as a child, she read to him Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters as a bedtime story.

In 2005, shortly before her death, Anne Bancroft became a grandmother when her daughter-in-law Michelle had a boy, Henry Michael Brooks.

Anne Bancroft had a drinking problem which resulted in being absent from work often, according to Elizabeth Wilson, who was Anne Bancroft's understudy in The Little Foxes and co-starred with her in The Graduate and The Prisoner of Second Avenue.

Anne Bancroft died of uterine cancer at age 73 on June 6,2005, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Anne Bancroft's body was interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, near her father; her mother would die five years after Bancroft in April 2010 and be buried with her family.