Sylvia Sidney

Acting

Sylvia Sidney

Born 1910-08-09 · The Bronx, New York, USA

Sylvia Sidney (born Sophia Kosow, August 8, 1910 – July 1, 1999) was an American stage, screen and film actress whose career spanned over 70 years. She rose to prominence in dozens of leading roles in the 1930s. She later gained attention for her role as Juno, a case worker in the afterlife, in Tim Burton's film Beetlejuice, for which she won a Saturn Award as Best Supporting Actress. She also was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973).

Acting credits

Beetlejuice poster
7.4

A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.

Beetlejuice

1988

Mars Attacks! poster
6.4

A fleet of Martian spacecraft surrounds the world's major cities and all of humanity waits to see if the extraterrestrial visitors have, as they claim, "come in peace." U.S. President James Dale receives assurance from science professor Donald Kessler that the Martians' mission is a friendly one. But when a peaceful exchange ends in the total annihilation of the U.S. Congress, military men call for a full-scale nuclear retaliation.

Mars Attacks!

1996

Damien - Omen II poster
6.4

Since the sudden and suspicious deaths of his parents, young Damien has been in the charge of his wealthy aunt and uncle and enrolled in a military school. Widely feared to be the Antichrist, he relentlessly plots to seize control of his uncle's business empire — and the world.

Damien - Omen II

1978

Copkiller poster
5.8

A NYPD officer imprisons and tortures an admitted cop-killer, but finds the tables turned when his victim refuses to break and in fact urges more punishment.

Copkiller

1983

Raid on Entebbe poster
6.0

Based on a true operation by Israeli commandos. An Air France flight is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The airplane landed in Uganda. The terrorists released some passengers, keeping 94 Jews and 12 air crew hostage. The Israeli government would not negotiate. A rescue plan was devised, and less than 100 commandos were flown across Africa to rescue the passengers in surprisingly successful operation.

Raid on Entebbe

1976

Violent Saturday poster
6.7

Three men case a small town very carefully, with plans to rob the bank on the upcoming Saturday, which turns violent and deadly.

Violent Saturday

1955

You Only Live Once poster
7.1

Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a break after being released from prison. When he is framed for murder, Taylor is forced to flee with his wife Joan Graham and baby. While escaping prison after being sentenced to death, Taylor becomes a real murderer, condemning himself and Joan to a life of crime and death on the road.

You Only Live Once

1937

Sabotage poster
6.7

Karl Anton Verloc and his wife own a small cinema in a quiet London suburb where they live seemingly happily. But Mrs. Verloc does not know that her husband has a secret that will affect their relationship and threaten her teenage brother's life.

Sabotage

1937

You and Me poster
6.6

Mr. Morris, the owner of a large metropolitan department store, gives jobs to paroled ex-convicts in an effort to help them reform and go straight. Among his 'employed-prison-graduates' are Helen Roberts and Joe Dennis, working as sales clerks. Joe is in love with Helen and asks her to marry him, but she is forbidden to marry as she is still on parole, but she says yes and they are married. In spite of their poverty-level life, their marriage is a happy one until Joe discovers she has lied about her past, in order to marry him. Disillusioned, he leaves, goes back to his old gang and plans to rob the department store.

You and Me

1938

Dead End poster
7.0

The lives of a young man and woman, an infamous gangster and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.

Dead End

1937

The Sorrows of Satan poster
7.2

Geoffrey is desperately in love with Mavis, who lives at his boardinghouse and is also pursuing a writing career. Unable to marry her because of his poverty, in his anger he curses God for abandoning him. Soon Geoffrey meets Prince Lucio de Rimanez, a wealthy, urbane gentleman who informs Geoffrey that he has inherited a fortune, but that he must place himself in the Prince's hands in order to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance. What Geoffrey doesn't know is that Prince Lucio is actually Satan.

The Sorrows of Satan

1926

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden poster
5.9

A disturbed and institutionalized 16-year-old girl struggles between fantasy and reality.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

1977

Used People poster
5.8

At her husband's funeral, Pearl, Jewish mother of two divorced and antagonistic daughters, meets an old Italian friend of her husband, whose advice years previously had stopped the husband leaving home. For 23 years he, now a widower, has secretly loved Pearl.

Used People

1992

Fury poster
7.5

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

Fury

1936

Night of 100 Stars poster
5.8

The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers paid up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and costume changes, tape rewinding, and the like. Executive producer Alexander Cohen estimated that the 5,800 Radio City Music Hall seats sold out at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. The show itself cost about $4 million to produce and was expected to yield around $2 million for the new addition to the Actors Fund retirement home in Englewood, N. J. ABC is reputed to have paid more than $5 million for the television rights.

Night of 100 Stars

1982

Night of 100 Stars III poster
4.3

A celebrity benefit for The Actors' Fund of America, featuring music, songs, dance and comedy.

Night of 100 Stars III

1990

Pick-up poster
5.1

The scheme of a pair of married con artists goes awry when their victim dies, and they are both caught and imprisoned. When she gets out of prison, she tries to put her life back together.

Pick-up

1933

Going Hollywood: The '30s poster
9.0

Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War.

Going Hollywood: The '30s

1984

Hammett poster
6.2

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

Hammett

1982

A Small Killing poster
8.5

A college professor is recruited by an undercover cop to pose as a bag lady to track down a drug connection following the brutal killing of a skid row crone.

A Small Killing

1981

God Told Me To poster
5.8

A New York detective investigates a series of murders committed by random citizens who claim that 'God told them to'.

God Told Me To

1976

Merrily We Go to Hell poster
6.5

A drunken newspaperman, Jerry Corbett, is rescued from his alcoholic haze by an heiress, Joan Prentice, whose love sobers him up and encourages him to write a play, but he lapses back into dipsomania.

Merrily We Go to Hell

1932

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine poster
6.5

A well-established tale of a long-running feud between two mountain clans.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

1936

The Helen Morgan Story poster
NR

Broadway legend Helen Morgan 's life as told by her mother, from her early start in second rate speakeasies to star of top rated shows and owning her own club. Also seen is her poor choices, such as her affair with a married man, her short marriage to a much younger man, a court fight over an adopted baby and her fatal descent into booze addiction.

The Helen Morgan Story

1957