Barbara Hershey

Actress

Birth Date: February 5, 1948

Age: 75 years old

Birth Place: Hollywood, California

Awards

Despite an early-career period marked by low-budget films and an unconventional personal life, award-winning actress Barbara Hershey found herself at the height of her professional success at a stage when most leading ladies begin to fade from the limelight. Born and raised in Hollywood, she broke into film and television while still in high school and landed leading roles in features such as "With Six You Get Eggroll" (1968) and "Last Summer" (1969). Having met actor David Carradine on an earlier film, the couple garnered more press for their counter-culture lifestyle than for their exploitative crime drama "Boxcar Bertha" (1972), directed by future cinema icon Martin Scorsese. Following a period during which she was largely considered persona non grata in Hollywood, Hershey rebounded in an incredibly impressive string of films, beginning in the early 1980s. "The Right Stuff" (1983), "The Natural" (1984), "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), "Hoosiers" (1986), and "Beaches" (1988) were only a handful of the acclaimed projects she appeared in at the time. Later roles included such critically-acclaimed features as "Portrait of a Lady" (1996) and "Black Swan" (2010), as well as TV work in the fantasy hit "Once Upon A Time" (ABC 2011- ) and the horror series "Damien" (A+E 2016). Once described as "one of America's finest actresses," Hershey continually explored characters rich in depth and diversity well into her sixties, a testament to her talent and a rarity in the unforgiving, male-centric landscape of mainstream film.