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Shirley MacLaine
You can enter the world of Shirley MacLaine in numerous ways.
Click here to visit her website. Not to mention nearly fifty motion pictures, countless television productions, a multitude of stage performances from Broadway, international tours, and nine books to her credit. She is an accomplished woman who has truly gone out on a limb.
Born April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, she is a proud Taurus. This plays a major role in her life: astrology, New Age philosophy, ET’s, UFO’s, reincarnation and destiny. She has always wanted to move beyond the protective boundaries that have been imposed by society and uncover the truth that underlies the visible. She is know for saying,” The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” She believes that,”we are not physical beings that happen to have souls, but that we are fundamentally souls that have chosen to be in the physical.” Our soul, she continues,” communes with one’s self to “touch and teach the rest of our being” unleashing a “divine power that can be part of our life every hour.”
Her mother was a drama teacher who set aside her own dreams of becoming an actress to care for her family. Her father was an educator and expanded his daughter’s knowledge of psychology and philosophy. She was encouraged to explore the world through her own inner direction. The search for truth became paramount and out of this interaction with humanity, Shirley MacLaine became a revolutionary and an investigator.
Initially introduced to ballet to compensate for weak knees, at the age of three, Ms. MacLaine tasted the desire to act. While in recital wearing a little green tutu, she tripped on the curtain and fell down. “That’s when I got my first laugh, and I liked it,” she said. “From then on I wanted to perform.”
She and her brother Warren Beatty, were very close as children and still maintain a good relationship, contrary to the paparazzi’s opinion. They have mutual respect for each other’s privacy. As children, they would tempt their imaginations in the movie theatre. With fifteen cents in hand, they would buy their admission and share some candy. Upon returning from the theatre, they would recreate the scenes they watched.
After her junior year in high school, MacLaine went to study in New York. She got a part in the chorus for the revival of Oscar and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma. It was then that she shifted from ballet to musical comedy and although she returned to Virginia to complete her high school studies, this was when the lights of Broadway entered her eyes.
Are you ready to enter the world of Shirley MacLaine? Hold on because she takes twists and turns that only an extraordinary woman with a unique life can take.
Shirley spins her psychology, philosophy and spiritual exploration into a formula for living in the 21st century.” She sees life as,” a creation each of us paints for ourselves…. Our own reality that aligns us with our destiny.” The goal is to, “reawaken the communicative harmony that naturally exists between Human, Earth Energy and Creation.” She takes risks and dares to be expressive. In 1983, she stepped out of the ‘cosmic closet’ with her book Out On A Limb and revealed a side of her persona that led to a rash of jokes by television comedians and radio commentators. She laughs at these times and recalls, “ The comedy writers would call me up and ask how they could improve a joke. So what did I do? I gave them the punch line. It always got big laughs.” She continues to share personal information. “ It was my idea to come out of a space ship at the Oscars. I told them it would be a sensation, and it was. I believe in the saying: ‘He who laughs at himself never ceases to be amused.’”
She is open, easy, willing and talented, extremely talented. Her ability to feel so deeply allows her to meld into the character of each role she plays. These days, she is enjoying a variety of experiences. She has recently completed the TV movie, These Old Broads with Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds and Joan Collins. It aired on February 12, 2001 on ABC. “Nobody was ever late, not even Elizabeth,” she said in an interview with Bob Thomas from the Associated Press. “We worked from 5 in the morning till 11:30 at night, and we made a 45-day picture in 22 days - not bad for four ‘old broads.”
Ms. MacLaine has just completed her ninth book, The Camino. She was encouraged by two anonymous letters imploring her to walk the Camino in order to fulfill her spiritual quest. The Camino, a 484-mile trail that begins in France, winds through the Pyrenees, continues across northern Spain, and ends in the city of Santiago, near a place that in ancient times was considered the edge of the world, beckoned her. She cancelled her next film and caught a plane to Spain. She was advised to travel light, eat sparingly, drink plenty of water and be prepared to die. She walked nearly twenty miles per day for thirty days. It is said, writes MacLaine, that the road lies directly under the Milky Way and follows ’key lines’ - energy reflected by the earth from the stars and believed to increase clarity of thought. On the Camino, during her grueling trek in which she endured rain, heat, mud, mosquitoes, steep mountain paths and dusty fields, the visions came. She shares a lot on many subjects.
On The Camino
“You will discover you are more than you thought you were when you began.”
On the Earth
“The earth energy can’t be seen or tasted and it doesn’t have an odor. But the effects of the earth energy can be experienced… It isn’t loud, but it can be heard. It can’t be touched, but it can definitely be felt.”
On Her Life Journey
“I’m interested only in the truth inside. My life is about finding the truth of a character, the truth of a relationship, the truth of God, the truth of health. That’s all I’m interested in.”
On Truth
“Sometimes life chases you and you want to run. But then you have to turn around and face it.”
On Reincarnation
“I believe in Soul Memory.” At age seven as she stood on a statue in Jamestown, Virginia and the wind brushed her face, it carried an eerie memory of standing in the same spot centuries earlier.
On Being A Mother
Stephanie Sachiko was born in 1964. Her father and MacLaine’s husband, Steve Parker, spent time in Japan and was involved in stage shows and movies. Divorce forced a separation of thousands of miles and Sachi (as she was called) moved to Japan with her father at the age of 6. She bounced back and forth between parents and MacLaine admits such a childhood may have been difficult. Now married and living in Connecticut with her own two children, Airin, 4, and Frank Jr., 21/2,mother and daughter appear to have grown close. They talk about choices. “Sachi tried to be an actress but chose a normal family life. You do the best you can for your children. It’s better than being with a nanny in Beverly Hills.”
On Simplicity
She drives a 1986 car, lives in the same second floor apartment in California for forty years, frequently cleans out all her closets and has the same business manager for 45 years. “I like stability and simplicity in my life and career.”
On God
“We are all God! People don’t need an arbiter.” So, after years of soul-searching, she has abolished the middleman. “We are all capable of going straight to God. But until you look deeper into the divinity of yourself, you may invest in a preacher, priest, whoever. Look, you know you’re a child of God. You know everything in you is divine. Jesus taught us, the kingdom of heaven is within. It is.”
On the New Age
“Everything happens in its own time. I am not concerned that so many people are lagging behind in the truth; that’s their timing. For now,” she says on her web site, “ we can fully engage the world from the most ordinary experiences in attending to the small things of our daily lives as well as the unexplainable as we search for connections to our past and insights into our futures.”
Unique… means recognizing our inimitable and exceptional individually in a world that has many separate beings living as one civilization. Shirley MacLaine has come to know the truth about her life. As she simultaneously walks in two worlds, she crashes the façade and glimpses the essence. Now that’s the way to go out on a limb. | |
