Anne Bancroft Biography

Although Bancroft played Dustin Hoffman’s much older lover in The Graduate, she is only six years older than him.

She has appeared onscreen three times with her husband Mel Brooks: in Silent Movie (1976), To Be or Not to Be (1983) and an episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Bancroft was the original choice to play Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest (1981) but she backed out at the eleventh hour. The part went to Faye Dunaway.

After meeting Mel Brooks she told her therapist to conclude the therapy as fast as possible because she had met the man she was going to marry.

Bancroft died of uterine cancer aged 73 at Mount Sinai Hospital, NYC. As she was a very private person, her friends were unaware of her failing health.

20th Century Fox thought her birth name of Italiano was “too ethnic” so she chose Bancroft because it sounded dignified.

Bancroft is also one of only eight actors to have won a Tony and an Oscar for the same role on screen and on stage in The Miracle Worker.

Although she was raised a Catholic she converted to Judaism after meeting Mel Brooks.