Barbara Hershey
☼ Born on 5 December 1948, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
Biography
Barbara Hershey was born Barbara Lynn Herzstein in Hollywood, California to Melrose Moore and Arnold Nathan Herzstein, a horse-racing columnist. Her father, born in Manhattan, was from a Jewish family from Hungary and Russia, and her mother, originally from Arkansas, had English and Scots-Irish ancestry. Hershey was raised in a small bungalow and had aspirations of being an actress from her earliest memories.
The multi-award-winning actress has been in some of Hollywood's most memorable films. She has been a winner of an Emmy and a Golden Globe for A Killing in a Small Town (1990). She won two consecutive Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival (which is unprecedented) for Shy People (1987) and A World Apart (1988). She won a Gemini Award for Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning (2008) for PBS and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Vienna International Film Festival.
Hershey was nominated for an Academy Award for The Portrait of a Lady (1996).
She's worked with some of the world's great directors, including Martin Scorsese, William Wyler, Woody Allen, Jane Campion, and Darren Aronofsky.
The versatile actress was first discovered by a talent agent while she was attending Hollywood High School. She began working in television, The Monroes (1966), and film, With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), with Doris Day; with roles in The Baby Maker (1970) and Boxcar Bertha (1972), she quickly advanced to starring roles.
The 1980s catapulted Hershey's film career, when she starred in
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The Stunt Man (1980) with Peter O'Toole, The Entity (1982), The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984) with Robert Redford, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) with Woody Allen, Hoosiers (1986) with Gene Hackman, Tin Men (1987), Shy People (1987), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), A World Apart (1988), and Beaches (1988) with Bette Midler.
Hershey returned to television in 1990 with her highly-lauded performance in A Killing in a Small Town (1990), Paris Trout (1991), Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), the British mini-series Daniel Deronda (2002), and the last season of Chicago Hope (1994).
During the same period, Hershey remained active in features. She was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe for The Portrait of a Lady (1996). She also starred in Merchant-Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998) and the award-winning Australian film, Lantana (2001).
In the 2010 years, Hershey has performed in James Wan's cult-hit, Insidious (2010) and Darren Aronofsky's award-winning Black Swan (2010), playing Natalie Portman's insane mother.
Hershey resides in Los Angeles.
In the role of actor
Strange Darling (01/09/2024)
The final reign of terror of a serial killer is told in a non-linear fashion in Strange Darling. The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) is being pursued down a rural stretch of road by the Demon (Kyle Gallner), who shoots at her with a shotgun. The Lady eventually takes shelter at the home of an eccentric doomsday […]
Falling (07/02/2021)
A man has to care for his deeply cruel and homophobic dementia-suffering father in Falling. John Peterson (Viggo Mortensen) is a gay man, who brings his father Willis (Lance Henriksen), who is suffering from the early signs of dementia, to John’s home in California with his husband Eric (Terry Chen) and daughter Monica (Gabby Velis). […]
Insidious: Chapter 2 (22/09/2013)
James Wan returns with his second horror film of the year (and apparently his final one for the foreseeable future). Insidious: Chapter 2 takes place nearly immediately after the events of the previous film and sees Josh and Renai Lambert (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) staying with their kids at the house of Josh’s mother […]
The Manor (25/04/2013)
One of the first shots seen in, Hot Docs opening film, The Manor is a man cleaning a neon sign of a suggestively posed woman. If you were unaware of the fact the the Manor of the title is a strip club located in Guelph, the film makes sure to enlighten you to this fact […]
Black Swan (05/12/2010)
Darren Aronofsky is known for being a bit of a visionary, so it would have been obvious that a film about ballet would turn out to be more than meets the eye. It would be hard to talk about this film without going into spoiler-territory, however I can say that the film is about a […]