Jill Clayburgh (April 30, 1944 – November 5, 2010) was an American actress known for her work in theater, television, and cinema. She received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her breakthrough role in Paul Mazursky's comedy drama An Unmarried Woman (1978). She received a second consecutive Academy Award nomination for Starting Over (1979) as well as four Golden Globe nominations for her film performances, and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her television work.
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Early life
Clayburgh was born in New York City, the daughter of a Protestant mother and a Jewish father. Her mother, Julia Louise (née Dorr), was an actress and theatrical production secretary for producer David Merrick. Her father was Albert Henry "Bill" Clayburgh, a manufacturing executive. Her paternal grandmother was concert and opera singer Alma Lachenbruch Clayburgh (1881–1958). Her brother, Jim Clayburgh, is a scenic designer.
Clayburgh reportedly never talked about her religious background and was not raised in the faith of either of her parents. Clayburgh never got along with her parents and began therapy at an early age: "I was very rebellious as a teenager, aside from having an unhappy, neurotic childhood. But I just can't go into it. I think I had a lot of energy and undirected need so I just kind of rebelled in a general fashion. I got myself in terrible, very personal trouble. Therapy has helped me a lot in my life."
As a child, Clayburgh was inspired to become an actress when she saw Jean Arthur as Peter Pan on Broadway in 1950. She was raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where she attended the all-girls Brearley School. She then attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied religion, philosophy and literature, but ultimately decided to be an actress. She received her acting training at HB Studio.
Career
Early career
Clayburgh began acting as a student in summer stock and, after graduating, joined the Charles Street Repertory Theater in Boston, where she met another up-and-coming actor and future Academy Award-winning star, Al Pacino, in 1967. They met after starring in Jean-Claude Van Itallie's play America, Hurrah. They had a five-year romance and moved back together to New York City.
In 1968, Clayburgh debuted off-Broadway in the double bill of Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx and It's Called the Sugar Plum, also starring Pacino. Clayburgh and Pacino were cast in "Deadly Circle of Violence", an episode of the ABC television series NYPD, premiering November 12, 1968. Clayburgh at the time was also appearing on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, playing the role of Grace Bolton. Her father would send the couple money each month to help with finances.
She eventually made her Broadway debut in 1968 in The Sudden and Accidental Re-Education of Horse Johnson, co-starring Jack Klugman, which ran for five performances. In 1969, she starred in an off-Broadway production of the Henry Bloomstein play Calling in Crazy, at the Andy Warhol-owned Fortune theatre. She was in a TV pilot that did not sell, The Choice (1969) and appeared off Broadway in The Nest (1970).
In 1969, Clayburgh made her screen debut in The Wedding Party, written and directed by Brian De Palma. The Wedding Party was filmed in 1963 (during which Clayburgh was at Sarah Lawrence) but not released until six years later. The film focuses on a soon-to-be groom and his interactions with various relatives of his fiancée and members of the wedding party; Clayburgh played the bride-to-be. Her co-stars included Robert De Niro, in one of his early film roles, and Jennifer Salt. In his review from The New York Times, Howard Thompson wrote, "As the harassed engaged couple, two newcomers, Charles Pfluger and Jill Clayburgh, are as appealing as they can be."
Broadway success
Clayburgh attracted attention when she appeared in the Broadway musical The Rothschilds (1970–72) which ran for 502 performances. She then went on to play Desdemona opposite James Earl Jones in the 1971 production of Othello in Los Angeles, and had another Broadway success with Pippin (1972–75), which ran for 1,944 performances. Clive Barnes of The New York Times found Clayburgh to be "all sweet connivance as the widow out to get her man".
During this time, Clayburgh had a string of brief character parts in film and television. Some of these include The Telephone Book (1971), Portnoy's Complaint (1972), The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and The Terminal Man (1974), opposite George Segal.
After guest-starring on an episode of The Snoop Sisters, Clayburgh played Ryan O'Neal's ex-wife in The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and starred in a TV pilot that was not picked up, Going Places (1973). She also guest starred on Medical Center, Maude, and The Rockford Files. She hosted Saturday Night Live on February 28, 1976 (Season 1, Episode 15) with musical guest, Leon Redbone. She later returned to Broadway for Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, which ran for 48 performances. Despite her success on Broadway, it was film acting that really excited Clayburgh: "One of the things I like about the movies is the adventure of it," she said. "I like going to different places and I like doing a different scene every day."
Clayburgh was praised for her performances in the TV movies Hustling (1975), in which she played a prostitute, and The Art of Crime (1975). Hustling was a departure for her: "Before I did Hustling I was always cast as a nice wife. I wasn't very good at it. Then with Hustling, it was a nice role and it was a departure. People saw a different dimension." Her performance in the TV film eventually earned her an Emmy nomination; she later said it revitalised her career. "It changed my career," Clayburgh said. "It was a part that I did well, and suddenly people wanted me. Sidney Furie saw me, and wanted me for Gable and Lombard."
An Unmarried Woman and film stardom
Clayburgh was cast as Carole Lombard in the 1976 biopic Gable and Lombard with James Brolin as Clark Gable. Variety called it "a film with many major assets, not the least of which is the stunning and smashing performance of Clayburgh as Carole Lombard" and Time Out London felt she "produced a very modern version of the Lombard larkishness." Vincent Canby of The New York Times suggested that her performance "comes off better" than Brolin's Gable, as "she appears to be creating a character whenever the fearfully bad screenplay allows it." Despite this, he felt both actors were miscast as the famous couple, writing further, "Miss Clayburgh could be an interesting actress, but there are always problems when small performers try to portray the kind of giant legends that Gable and Lombard were. Because both Gable and Lombard are still very much alive in their films on television and in repertory theaters, there is difficulty in responding to Mr. Brolin and Miss Clayburgh in any serious way."
She starred in the acclaimed TV movie Griffin and Phoenix (1976) co-starring with Peter Falk. It tells the story of two ill-fated middle-aged characters who both face a terminal cancer diagnosis and have months left to live. Notably, Clayburgh developed the same type of cancer her character had in this film, succumbing to it in 2010. Also in 1976, she had her first big box office success playing the love interest of Gene Wilder's character in the comedy-mystery Silver Streak, also starring Richard Pryor. Critics felt Clayburgh had little to do in Silver Streak, and The New York Times called her "an actress of too much intelligence to be able to fake identification with a role that is essentially that of a liberated ingenue".
In 1977, she had another hit with Semi-Tough, a comedy set in the world of American professional football, which also starred Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson. Clayburgh played Barbara Jane Bookman, who has a subtle love triangle relationship with both Reynolds and Kristofferson's characters. Vincent Canby liked her performance, writing, "Miss Clayburgh, who's been asked to play zany heroines in Gable and Lombard and Silver Streak by people who failed to provide her with material, has much better luck this time. She's charming," and The Washington Post enjoyed her chemistry with Reynolds: "Reynolds and Clayburgh look wonderful together. They seem to harmonize in a way that would only be more apparent - and make their eventual recognition of being in love seem more appropriate." Both Semi-Tough and Silver Streak earned her a reputation "as a popular modern stylist of screwball comedy" and The Guardian noted how Clayburgh "had the kind of warmth and witty sophistication barely seen in Hollywood since Carole Lombard and Jean Arthur".
Career setbacks and TV films
By the mid-1980s, Clayburgh appeared in fewer and less successful films, despite turning to more dramatic material. She played a valium addict and documentarist in I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1981), written by David Rabe, her husband. "I guess people look at me and they think I'm a ladylike character," said Clayburgh, "but it's not what I do best. I do best with characters who are coming apart at the seams." The film received negative reviews, but Janet Maslin of The New York Times liked Clayburgh's performance and wrote that she played her high-powered career woman "earnestly and vigorously". In the controversial Hanna K. (1983), she was a court-appointed Israeli-American lawyer assigned to defend a Palestinian man for director Costa-Gavras. The film was a box office failure and hurt her career. Upset by the film's reception, Clayburgh gave up cinema for three years, during which time she was busy bringing up her children.
Alongside then-rising stars Raúl Julia and Frank Langella, Clayburgh returned to Broadway for a revival of Noël Coward's Design for Living (1984–85), directed by George C. Scott, which ran for 245 performances. Writing for the Christian Science Monitor, John Beaufort wrote, "Jill Clayburgh's Gilda is not merely sexy and volatile. She can be sweetly feminine. She is a woman struggling both to find herself and to discover where she belongs in this triangle. In more than one respect, Miss Clayburgh grasps the deeper as well as the more superficially amusing aspects of her dilemma."
As her feature film career waned, Clayburgh began accepting roles in television films, including Where Are the Children? (1986) as a divorcée who gets revenge on her ex-spouse, and Miles to Go... (1986). She returned to film in 1987 when she drew praise for portraying a shallow, sophisticated Manhattan magazine writer in Andrei Konchalovsky's little-seen independent film Shy People; although the film flopped, this was her most substantial film role after Hanna K. The Guardian found her "amusing" while Ebert called Clayburgh's work "sadly overlooked" and her "other best role" after An Unmarried Woman.
After Shy People, Clayburgh took on a series of roles in the television films Who Gets the Friends? (1988) and Fear Stalk (1989), in which she portrayed a budding cartoonist and a strong-willed soap opera producer, respectively. She then played an investigator studying a child-abuse case in Unspeakable Acts (1990). In 1991, Clayburgh earned decent reviews for her role as English actress and singer Jill Ireland in the television biopic Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story (1991), which detailed Ireland's struggle to beat cancer and to help her adopted son get past his heroin addiction. Although Clayburgh never met Ireland, she read her book and listened to taped interviews with her in preparation. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly praised Clayburgh's accent in Reason for Living, writing, "Quite aside from her smooth assurance, Clayburgh pulls off Ireland's English accent without calling attention to herself." This performance led The New York Times to write that her small-screen work was "a sign of the times: older actresses accustomed to playing strong roles are finding their best work [in film] on television".
Later career and final roles
After appearing in My Little Assassin (1999) and The Only Living Boy in New York (2000), she had her first prominent lead role since Hanna K. and Shy People in Eric Schaeffer's comedy Never Again (2001). Roger Ebert praised Clayburgh "for do[ing] everything humanly possible to create a character who is sweet and believable" and called it "a reminder of Clayburgh's gifts as an actress", while Stephen Holden of the New York Times credited her for lending "emotional weight" to the part of "a desperately lonely 54-year-old single mother". Also in 2001, she appeared in Falling and had a semi-recurring role on Ally McBeal as Ally's mother and on The Practice, before becoming a regular in another short-lived show, Leap of Faith (2002).
She returned to off-Broadway as a falsely convicted mother-of-two in Bob Balaban's production of The Exonerated (2002–04) with Richard Dreyfuss. Writing for Variety magazine, Charles Isherwood commended Clayburgh for playing her part "with clear-eyed dignity". She then appeared in Phenomenon II (2003) and received an Emmy nomination for guest appearances in the series Nip/Tuck in 2005. That year she continued her resurgent stage career in A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, which ran for 69 performances. More successful was The Busy World is Hushed (2005–06) on off-Broadway, where she replaced Christine Lahti and played a widowed Episcopal minister and scholar. Variety critic David Rooney praised Clayburgh's "wisdom and quiet humor while refusing to define Hannah's questionable behavior and convictions as right or wrong, sound or unsound" and her "embrace of the woman's uncertainties, mak[ing] her all the more human".
In 2006, she appeared on Broadway in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park with Patrick Wilson and Amanda Peet; she played Peet's mother, a role originated by Mildred Natwick. It ran for 109 performances and was met with mixed reviews. Still, Clayburgh's performance drew praise and the New York Times critic Ben Brantley lauded her "winning way with dialogue that can make synthetic one-liners sound like filigree epigrams. Trim and dazzlingly blond, she is a glamorous eyeful in Isaac Mizrahi's rich dowager costumes." She returned to the screen that same year as a therapist's eccentric wife in Ryan Murphy's all-star ensemble dramedy Running with Scissors, an autobiographical tale of teenage angst and dysfunction based on the book by Augusten Burroughs; also starring Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Evan Rachel Wood, Clayburgh's supporting performance earned her a Best Supporting Actress nomination by the St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association. By the end of 2006, Clayburgh played a wistful eccentric in what was her last stage appearance, The Clean House (2006–07) on off-Broadway, and was praised for her "goofy lightness" by The Post Gazette.
Personal life
As a teenager, Clayburgh had two back-alley abortions, which she chronicled in the 1991 book The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out About Abortion. Clayburgh dated actor Al Pacino from 1967 to 1972.
She married screenwriter and playwright David Rabe in 1979. They had two children: a son, and a daughter, the actress Lily Rabe.
Clayburgh was a member of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group. In 1984, she signed a letter protesting West German arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Death
Clayburgh died at her home in Lakeville, Connecticut, on November 5, 2010, after privately battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia for more than 20 years.