Ali MacGraw shot to fame in Hollywood in no time. However, just as fast as she became famous, she vanished from the entertainment world completely.
Now, at 85 years old, the actress lives in a small, quiet town, and she’s embracing her age with her beautiful grey hair.
Ali MacGraw
Ali MacGraw, whose real name is Elizabeth Alice MacGraw, was born on April 1, 1939, in Pound Ridge, New York, USA.
Her mom, Frances, was an artist and worked at a school in Paris before moving to Greenwich Village.
She got married to Richard MacGraw, who was also an artist. Ali was born in 1939.
Ali’s dad, Richard, had some problems from his childhood that made him a bit different from other people.
He had a tough childhood in an orphanage and ran away at 16 to go to sea.
Later, he studied at an art school in Munich, Germany.
“Daddy was scared and really, really mad. He never forgave his real parents for leaving him,” Ali said, explaining that her dad spent his adult life “hiding the anger that covered all his pain.”
Ali MacGraw – childhood
Money was tight for their family as well. Frances and Richard, along with Ali and her brother, Richard Jr., had to move into a house in a Pound Ridge wilderness area that they shared with an older couple.
“There were no doors; we had to share the kitchen and bathroom with them,” Ali explained. “It was a complete lack of privacy. It was awful.”
Mom Frances took on several commercial art projects to support the family. Meanwhile, Richard struggled to sell his paintings, which made him very frustrated. Ali’s brother Richard often took the brunt of his anger at home.
“On good days he was wonderful, but on bad days he was terrible,” she remembered. “Daddy would really hurt my brother. I saw it happen, and it was awful.”
Ali was the child of artists, and she realized that she also wanted to pursue a creative career as she grew up. She received a scholarship to the prep school Rosemary Hall, and in 1956, she moved to Massachusetts to study at Wellesley College.
By the age of 22, Ali MacGraw moved to New York and got her first job as an assistant editor at Harper’s Bazaar, working with photographers as an assistant.
Fashion work in New York
Fashion editor Diana Vreeland hired Ali, who she remembers as a “flunkie.” If you’ve seen the movie The Devil Wears Prada, it was kind of like that.
“It was ‘Girl! Get me a pencil!’” MacGraw remembered.
The future Hollywood star worked as an assistant for a few months. Then, about six months later, fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky noticed her stunning looks, and Ali MacGraw got a job as a stylist with a better paycheck. She would stay in that role for six years.
“I don’t know where she got this work ethic, but Ali would come in at eight a.m., and many times I’d come back at one in the morning and she would still be doing things for the next day,” recalls Ruth Ansel, a former art director of Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar.
Ali was amazing as a stylist. But soon, she was asked to step in front of the cameras as a model. It didn’t take long before she was on magazine covers everywhere, even showing up in TV commercials. One thing led to another, and Ali jumped right into acting.
She had been sketched nude by Salvador Dali a couple of years earlier. But when the surrealist artist started sucking her toes, MacGraw decided that she’d rather be an actress than a model.
Ali MacGraw – films
Ali jumped right from being an unknown stylist into the movie world, and wow, she really made an entrance.
She didn’t have any formal training in acting, which added something special to her performances. Her natural beauty was breathtaking, and people loved her.
After a small part in A Lovely Way to Die (1968), she was invited to star in the 1969 film Goodbye, Columbus. This turned out to be a fantastic decision, as MacGraw won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female. The next year, she had her big international breakthrough with a role that would define her career.
Ali MacGraw got a script from her agent. She read it and cried twice because she loved it so much. She decided she really wanted to be in it, so she arranged a meeting with the film’s producer Robert Evans – who was the head of production at Paramount Pictures – at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Not only did Evans think she was the perfect fit for the role in the movie Love Story, but he also completely fell for her.
MacGraw – who played Jenny – acted alongside Ryan O’Neal in the film Love Story. This American romantic drama, where Ali portrayed a working-class college student, became a huge success.
Love Story premiered in 1970, and the audience absolutely loved it. It became the top film in the United States, and at that time, it was the sixth highest-grossing movie ever in the US and Canada.
Award-winning actress
MacGraw received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, and the movie also brought her another win along with five more Academy Award nominations. She won a second Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Film producer Robert Evans not only admired her on screen, but he also fell in love with her in real life, and she felt the same way. In 1969, they got married, and two years later, they had a son named Josh Evans.
Ali MacGraw was the exciting new star of the 1970s, but her personal life and marriage to Evans would soon end. Steve McQueen came to their house to ask her to act with him in The Getaway, and the two stars hit it off immediately.
“I looked into those blue eyes, and my knees started shaking,” MacGraw remembered. “I became obsessed.”
MacGraw and McQueen had an affair, and she soon left Evans to live with the actor in Malibu, along with her son Josh.
“Steve was this very original, principled guy who didn’t seem to be part of the system, and I loved that,” she said.
Ali MacGraw – Steve McQueen
But after some time, Ali understood that Steve McQueen had his own issues. After his father left his mother, a 14-year-old Steve ended up at a school for troubled kids. MacGraw mentioned that he never trusted women after that.
(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
He wasn’t happy that she had a job and her own career. For a time, Ali took care of their sons at home. But the things her husband wanted were something Ali just couldn’t deal with for a long time.
On top of that, he would get really angry if she even glanced at another guy. He also insisted that she sign a prenup, which meant she wouldn’t ask for anything if they ever got divorced. She followed that agreement when they split in 1978.
“I couldn’t even attend art class because Steve thought his ‘old lady’ should be home every night with dinner ready,” she remembered.
“Steve’s type of attractive was not me. He preferred blonde bimbos, and they were always around.
This was the start of a pretty dark time in MacGraw’s life. She arrived on set to shoot the 1978 film Convoy both drunk and high, which prompted her to quit drugs.
Leaving show business
At the same time, a few of her films, like Players (1970) and Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), didn’t do well.
“It’s tough for women,” MacGraw shared with The Guardian about coming back to show business in the late 1970s.
“I don’t think there’s a woman over 40 who has been in the spotlight who doesn’t get tired of the kind of questions the media throws at you, the fashion world, all of it. It’s harsh.”
MacGraw had a brief time as a big Hollywood star. After that, she chose to work in interior design, but she didn’t completely leave her show business career behind. She was in the television miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and China Rose (1985), but soon, her life took a turn for the worse.
Ali MacGraw just couldn’t find any film roles, and she felt worthless. At the same time, she didn’t feel whole without a partner, saying that being in love was like “a drug high.”
She felt lonely and hopeless, and she drank a lot. In 1986, she went to the Betty Ford Clinic in California.
“The worst things happened when I drank,” she explained. “I lost my judgment; I was attracted to other women’s husbands.”
Family tragedies
Her son Josh Evans was 15 years old back then and it was tough for him to see his mom in pain. MacGraw went through 30 days of group therapy and came out much stronger.
In 1993, another sad event happened when her house in California was destroyed by a wildfire. After that, she chose to leave Los Angeles and moved to a small town close to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“I live in a small village north of Santa Fe, New Mexico called Tesuque,” she shared last year.
According to McGraw, her neighbors don’t think of her as a former Hollywood star – they really value all the community service she’s been doing.
For instance, she has been volunteering at the annual International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ali MacGraw stepped away from acting, but in 2006, she found herself back on stage. She teamed up again with her Love Story co-star Ryan O’Neal in the Broadway version of the Danish film Festen.
Besides the Broadway show, MacGraw has stayed out of the limelight for the past few decades. She has dedicated herself to animal rights work and has made many successful yoga videos.
In an interview with the Herald-Tribune in 2019, MacGraw mentioned that she is still open to new experiences and projects.
“One of the lucky things for someone my age is that I’m open and curious,” MacGraw said. “There’s not just one thing I love to do and feel sad if I can’t. But I know that I’m not happy when I’m not doing something creative.
Josh Evans – Ali MacGraw
Even though Ali stopped acting, her family is still involved in the industry. Her son, Josh Evans, is both an actor and a director, and he has built a solid reputation in Hollywood.
Plus, he resembles his mother a lot!
Being the son of famous Hollywood stars Robert Evans and Ali MacGraw definitely came with a lot of expectations.
But for Josh Evans, who was born in January 1971, he always wanted to be in show business from a young age.
Interestingly, the first job he ever wanted wasn’t in movies. He didn’t dream of being an actor; it just kind of happened.
In 1989, Josh Evans landed a small role in Dream a Little Dream, but he was eager to do more. As a teenager with nothing to lose, he would visit the manager’s office to check out the listings of movies being produced.
Josh Evans – actor & director
That’s when he ran into someone he knew, the famous director Oliver Stone. At that time, he was working on the movie Born on the Fourth of July, which starred Tom Cruise. Josh really wanted to be a part of it.
“Back then, I only knew [Oliver Stone] from Platoon. He was making a film with Tom Cruise and there was a role for the younger brother. I wanted to play that role, so he arranged a meeting for me with Oliver Stone,” Josh Evans remembers.
“When I was with him, Oliver asked, ‘Oh, do you think you look like Tom Cruise?’. Now that I know him better, I see he was joking, but I replied, ‘Yeah, I do.’ Then he said, ‘We’ll see what happens.’ Four months later, I received a call to audition and I got the role. It was super exciting, and you could really feel how special that movie was going to be.”
Since that time, Josh has had an amazing career in both acting and directing. He appeared in the biographical film The Doors in 1991, and since then, he has been involved in both acting and directing.
With eight movies directed, he had Michael Madsen in his 2015 film Death in the Desert. But what does he enjoy the most?
“I feel way more at ease on the side of the camera that doesn’t show me,” says Josh Evans.
“If a cool chance comes up, I wouldn’t say no. I believe there are others who are better suited and want it more than I do. When it comes to directing and sharing my stories, I’d do that for free, while acting feels more like a job, but I do have fun when I’m doing it.”
Josh Evans – family
Josh is a really good-looking guy, and he looks a lot like his mom, Ali MacGraw, especially with his big, beautiful eyes.
In 2019, his dad, Robert Evans, who was Ali’s ex-husband, passed away. Still, the family has great memories of being together when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.
Josh has been married two times. In October 2012, he tied the knot with American singer and musician Roxy Saint. By that time, their son Jackson was already two years old – Grandma Ali MacGraw loves spending time with her amazing family.
— roxysaint (@roxysaint) October 30, 2019
“He’s amazing,” MacGraw said about her son. “He’s my favorite person in the world, and he’s dating a girl I really like. Their relationship is all about friendship and respect, among other things.”
Ali MacGraw and Josh Evans must be really proud of their lovely family. We wish them all the best for what’s to come, and who knows, maybe we’ll see them together on stage or in a movie someday?
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