Academy Award for Best Actress

1995

Susan Sarandon 

as

Helen Prejean

Dead Man Walking

Susan Abigail Sarandon (/səˈrændən/; née Tomalin; born October 4, 1946) is an American actress. She is an Academy Award and BAFTA Award winner who is also known for her social and political activism for a variety of liberal causes. She was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1999 and received the Action Against Hunger Humanitarian Award in 2006.

Sarandon began her career in the 1970 film Joe, before appearing in the soap opera A World Apart (1970–71). She made her Broadway debut in An Evening with Richard Nixon in 1972, and went on to receive Drama Desk Award nominations for the Off-Broadway plays, A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking (1979) and Extremities (1982). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Atlantic City (1980), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's Oil (1992) and The Client (1994), before winning for Dead Man Walking (1995). She has also won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Client and the SAG Award for Best Actress for Dead Man Walking.

On television, she is a five-time Emmy Award nominee, including for her guest roles on the sitcoms Friends (2001) and Malcolm in the Middle (2002), and the TV films Bernard and Doris (2007) and You Don't Know Jack (2010). She returned to Broadway in the 2009 revival of Exit the King. Her other films include The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Pretty Baby (1978), The Hunger (1983), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Bull Durham (1988), White Palace (1990), Little Women (1994), Stepmom (1998), Igby Goes Down (2002), Enchanted (2007), The Lovely Bones (2009), Arbitrage (2012) and Tammy (2014).