Norma Shearer
Canadian-American actress (1902-1983) · Canada · On the map · Actors · Died at 80
She made it acceptable to play women who had sex lives and didn't apologize. Six Oscar nominations between 1929 and 1938, a Best Actress win for The Divorcee, and a string of roles - Coward, O'Neill, Shakespeare - where the characters wanted things and said so.
Norma Shearer is read about 806 times a day, in 64 languages.
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HollywoodSeries1972
Hollywood: The Dream FactoryFilm1955
MGM ParadeSeries1940
A New Romance of Celluloid: The Miracle of SoundFilm1938Volpi Cup for Best ActressAward
Marie AntoinetteFilm, 1938Marie Antoinette1936
Romeo and JulietFilm, Juliet1933
Going HollywoodFilm, Herself - Premiere Clip (archive footage)1931
A Free SoulFilm, Jan Ashe1930Academy Award for Best ActressAward1929
The Hollywood Revue of 1929Film1928
A Lady of ChanceFilm, Dolly Morgan1925
1925 Studio TourFilm1920
The FlapperFilm, Schoolgirl (uncredited)1902Born10 August 1902People around Norma
Louis B. Mayer Produced Lady of the Night and The Snob
Robert Z. Leonard Directed The Divorcee and Strange Interlude
Sidney Franklin Directed The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Monta Bell Directed Pretty Ladies and Lady of the Night
Harry Rapf Produced The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
George Cukor Directed Romeo and Juliet and The Women
Robert Montgomery Also in Their Own Desire and Going Hollywood
Herbert Stothart Wrote Romeo and Juliet and Marie Antoinette- William Axt Wrote A Free Soul and He Who Gets Slapped
Joan Crawford Also in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Frances Marion Wrote The Flapper and Smilin' Through
John Gilbert Also in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Conrad Nagel Also in The Divorcee (1930)
Donald Ogden Stewart Wrote Marie Antoinette (1938)
Hobart Henley Directed A Slave of Fashion and His Secretary
Joseph Farnham Wrote The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
George K. Arthur Also in Pretty Ladies and Lady of the Night
Hunt Stromberg Produced Marie Antoinette and The Women
Hedda Hopper Also in The Women, The Stolen Jools and The Snob
Claire McDowell Also in The Tower of Lies and The Devil's Circus
William Haines Also in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)
Oscar Apfel Directed The Man Who Paid (1922)
Ralph Forbes Also in Smilin' Through and Riptide
Reginald Barker Directed Broken Barriers and Pleasure Mad
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Norma ShearerPartners
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He Who Gets Slapped 1924
That's Entertainment! 1974
The Women 1939
Way Down East 1920
The Divorcee 1930
Filmography 40
101 credits on file
Television 3
Media & music
Photos 12
Portrait of Shearer by Arnold Genthe, c. 1920
Norma Shearer's strabismus, 1926
Shearer in an early MGM publicity photo
Shearer in A Slave of Fashion (1925)
Shearer and Irving Thalberg outside the White House, 1929
Shearer and Thalberg on their wedding day, 1927
Norma Shearer holding her Best Actress award during the 3rd Academy Awards in November 1930.Awards
About this person
Edith Norma Shearer was born in Canada in 1902 and started in film in 1919. Through the silent era and into the talkies, she carved out a type: spunky, sexually liberated, unrepentant. The Divorcee brought her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930, the first of six nominations across a career that ended in 1942. She took on prestige material - adaptations of playwrights and Shakespeare - and played them as modern women, not mannequins. Critics later called her a feminist pioneer for making singleness and sexual agency look chic on screen, a shift that registered because audiences saw it happening in real time.
