Birthday: 1931-09-17

Place of Birth: The Bronx, New York

Height: 5' 6½" (1.69 m)

Wiki Biography: Anna Maria Italiano was born in the Bronx, New York. She was the second of three daughters born to Michael Italiano (1906-2001) and Mildred DiNapoli (1908-2010). After changing her name to Anne Bancroft, she made her cinema debut in 1952's Don't Bother to Knock (1952). Over the next five years, she appeared in a lot of forgettable movies as a supporting actress. Then, in 1957 she left the film industry and was offscreen until 1962, when she played Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Despite her Oscar win, Bancroft was not given the kinds of parts that created big screen stardom. She worked only occasionally during the next 30 years, but did give great performances as a lead actress in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987). The most famous role of her career was a supporting role, as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life Bancroft was just 35 and only five years older than costar Dustin Hoffman, who at age 30 played a 20 year old being seduced by a woman more than twice his age. Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work. By the nineties, her transition to full-time supporting actress in feature films was complete. She appeared in such movies as Point of No Return (1993), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), and Keeping the Faith (2000), but television provided Bancroft with larger and often meatier roles. She starred in seven made-for-TV films during her later years, all of which earned her major award nominations, including an Emmy win for Deep in My Heart (1999) (TV). Sadly, on June 6, 2005, Anne Bancroft died at age 73 of uterine cancer. Her death surprised many, as she had not released any details of her illness to the public. Among her survivors was her mother Mildred, her husband of forty years (Mel Brooks), and her only child (Max Brooks) who was born in 1972. Her final film, the animated feature Delgo (2008), was released posthumously in 2008 and dedicated to her memory.