Anne Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano; September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005)^[1] was an American actress. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award.^[2][3] She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting.

Associated with the method acting technique, having studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Bancroft made her film debut in the noir thriller Don't Bother to Knock in 1952, and then appeared in 14 other films over the following five years. In 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut with the play Two for the Seesaw, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. The following year she portrayed Anne Sullivan in the original Broadway production of The Miracle Worker, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Following her continued success on stage, Bancroft's film career was revived when she was cast in the acclaimed film adaptation of The Miracle Worker (1962) for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her film career further progressed with Oscar nominated performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985).

Bancroft continued to act in the later half of her life, with prominent roles in The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), and Up at the Villa (2000). She received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for the television films Broadway Bound (1992), Deep in My Heart (1999), for which she won, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). Bancroft died in 2005, at the age of 73, as a result of uterine cancer. She was married to director, actor, and writer Mel Brooks, with whom she had a son, author Max Brooks.

Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa (or Luisa) Italiano on September 17, 1931, in the Bronx, New York City, the middle of three daughters of Mildred (née Di Napoli), a telephone operator, and Michael G. Italiano, a dress pattern maker. Both of her parents' surnames were toponymic.^[4] Her parents were Italian immigrants from Southern Italy. In an interview, she stated that her family was originally from Muro Lucano, in the province of Potenza, Basilicata, Kingdom of Italy.^[5] She was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.^[6]

Bancroft was raised in Little Italy, in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, attended P.S. 12, later moving to 1580 Zerega Ave. and graduating from Christopher Columbus High School in 1948.^[7][8] She later attended HB Studio,^[9] the American Academy of Dramatic Arts,^[8] the Actors Studio and the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women at the University of California, Los Angeles. After appearing in a number of live television dramas, including Studio One^[8] and The Goldbergs^[8] under the name Anne Marno, later, at Darryl Zanuck's insistence,^[8] she chose the less Mediterranean surname of Bancroft "because it sounded dignified".^[10]

Bancroft's first husband was lawyer Martin May, of Lubbock, Texas. They married on July 1, 1953, separated in November 1955, and divorced on February 13, 1957.^[1][39] She had previously been engaged to actor John Ericson in 1951.^[40] Lee Marvin's ex-wife Betty claimed in her 2010 book Tales of a Hollywood Housewife that Marvin had an affair with Bancroft when they co-starred in Gorilla at Large (1954) and A Life in the Balance (1955).^[41]

In 1961, Bancroft met Mel Brooks at a rehearsal for Perry Como's variety show Kraft Music Hall. Bancroft and Brooks married on August 5, 1964, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau near New York City Hall, and remained married until her death in 2005. Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.^[42][43]

Bancroft worked with her husband three times on the screen: dancing a tango in Brooks's Silent Movie (1976), in his remake of To Be or Not to Be (1983)^[10] and in the episode entitled "Opening Night" (2004) of the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm.^[33] The couple also appeared in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995),^[10] but never appeared together again. Brooks produced the film The Elephant Man (1980), in which Bancroft acted. He was executive producer for the film 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) in which she starred. Both Brooks and Bancroft appeared in Season 6 of The Simpsons. According to the DVD commentary, when Bancroft came to record her lines for the episode "Fear of Flying", the Simpsons writers asked if Brooks had come with her (which he had); she joked, "I can't get rid of him!"

In a 2010 interview, Brooks credited Bancroft as being the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater. In the same interview, he said of their first meeting in 1961, "From that day, until her death on June 6, 2005, we were glued together."^[44]

Bancroft's son, Max Brooks, said in a 2020 interview that she was "a secret, closet scientist". He said that, as a child, she read to him Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (1926) as a bedtime story.^[45]

In 2005, shortly before her death, Bancroft became a grandmother when her daughter-in-law Michelle gave birth to a boy, Henry Michael Brooks.^[46]

Bancroft had a drinking problem which resulted in being absent from work often, according to Elizabeth Wilson, who was Bancroft's understudy in The Little Foxes and co-starred with her in The Graduate (1967) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975).^[47]

Bancroft died of uterine cancer at age 73 on June 6, 2005, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.^[48] Her death surprised many, including some of her friends, as the intensely private Bancroft had not disclosed any details of her illness.^[49] Her body was interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, near her father, Michael Italiano, and her mother, Mildred Italiano (who died five years after Anne in April 2010).^[50] Her final film, Delgo, was dedicated to her memory.

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