Ali MacGraw became a Hollywood superstar almost overnight. Yet, just as rapidly as she reached the height of fame, she disappeared completely from the entertainment world.
Today, the 85-year-old actress lives quietly in a small, remote town, embracing life and aging gracefully with her gray hair.
Ali MacGraw, born Elizabeth Alice MacGraw, was born on April 1, 1939, in Pound Ridge, New York, USA. Her mother, Frances, was an artist who worked at a school in Paris before eventually settling in Greenwich Village. She married Richard MacGraw, who was also an artist. In 1939, Ali was born.
Ali’s father, Richard, reportedly carried difficulties from his own childhood that made him somewhat different from other people.
He had endured a terrible childhood in an orphanage and ran away when he was 16 to go to sea. Later, he studied at an art school in Munich, Germany.
“Daddy was frightened and really, really angry. He never forgave his real parents for giving him up,” Ali explained, adding that her father spent his adult life “suppressing the rage that covered all his hurt.”
Ali MacGraw – childhood
Money was also tight for the family. Frances and Richard, along with Ali and her brother, Richard Jr., moved into a house on a wilderness preserve in Pound Ridge, where they shared the property with an elderly couple.
“There were no doors; we shared the kitchen and bathroom with them,” Ali said. “It was utter lack of privacy. It was horrible.”
Her mother, Frances, worked on various commercial-art assignments to help support the family. Meanwhile, Richard struggled to sell his paintings, which left him increasingly frustrated. At home, Ali’s brother Richard became the target of his anger.
“On good days he was great, but on bad days he was horrendous,” she recalled. “Daddy would beat my brother up, badly. I was witness to it, and it was terrible.”
Ali was raised by two artists, and as she grew older, she knew she also wanted to pursue a creative career. She received a scholarship to the prep school Rosemary Hall, and in 1956, she moved to Massachusetts to attend Wellesley College.
By the age of 22, Ali MacGraw had moved to New York, where she landed her first job as an assistant editor at Harper’s Bazaar, working alongside photographers as an assistant.
Fashion work in New York
Fashion editor Diana Vreeland hired Ali as what she remembered as a “flunkie.” Ever seen the film The Devil Wears Prada? It was quite similar.
“It was ‘Girl! Get me a pencil!’,” MacGraw recalled.
The future Hollywood star worked as an assistant for several months. Then, about six months later, fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky noticed her striking appearance. Ali MacGraw was hired as a stylist and received a better salary. She would remain in that position 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,” Ruth Ansel, a former art director of Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, recalled.
Ali excelled as a stylist. Before long, however, she was asked to step in front of the camera as a model. It wasn’t long before she appeared on magazine covers around the world and even starred in television commercials. One thing led to another, and Ali found herself diving headfirst into acting.
Ali MacGraw
Youtube/MikelNavarro
A couple of years earlier, Salvador Dali had sketched her nude. But when the surrealist artist began sucking her toes, MacGraw decided she would rather become an actress than continue modeling.
Ali MacGraw – films
Ali went directly from being an unknown stylist into the world of cinema, and she certainly made a dramatic entrance.
She had no formal training in film acting, which gave her performances another dimension. Her natural beauty was striking, and audiences immediately embraced her.
After a small role in A Lovely Way to Die (1968), she was invited to star in the 1969 film Goodbye, Columbus. It proved to be an excellent opportunity, as MacGraw received a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female. The following year, she achieved her major international breakthrough with a role that would largely define her career.
Ali MacGraw received a script from her agent. She read it and cried twice because she loved it so much. Determined to get the part, she arranged a meeting with the film’s producer, Robert Evans, who was then Paramount Pictures’ head of production, at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge. Evans not only believed she was perfect for the role in Love Story, but he also fell deeply in love with her.
MacGraw played Jenny opposite Ryan O’Neal in Love Story. The American romantic drama, in which Ali portrayed a working-class college student, became a massive success.
Ali MacGraw
Youtube/MikelNavarro
Love Story reached theaters in 1970, and audiences absolutely adored it. It became the No. 1 film in the United States and, at the time, was the sixth highest-grossing movie in history in the US and Canada.
Award-winning actress
MacGraw received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, while the film itself earned another win and five Academy Award nominations. She also won her second Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
Film producer Robert Evans not only admired her on screen; he had fallen in love with her in real life, and she felt the same way. In 1969, the couple married, and two years later, they welcomed their son, Josh Evans.
Ali MacGraw was the exciting new star of the 1970s, but her personal life and marriage to Evans would soon unravel. Steve McQueen had come to their home to ask her to appear opposite him in The Getaway, and the two Hollywood stars immediately connected.
“I looked in those blue eyes, and my knees started knocking,” MacGraw recalled. “I became obsessed.”
Ali MacGraw
Youtube/MikelNavarro
MacGraw and McQueen began an affair, and she soon left Evans to live with the actor in Malibu, taking her son Josh with her.
“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
Eventually, Ali realized that Steve McQueen had his own struggles. After his father abandoned his mother, 14-year-old Steve was sent to a school for delinquent children. According to MacGraw, he never trusted women afterward.
American actor Steve McQueen (1930–1980) with Ali MacGraw, circa 1972.
(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
He disliked the fact that she worked and had a career of her own. For a period, Ali stayed home to raise their sons. But her husband’s expectations were something she could not accept forever.
He would also lose his temper if she even looked at another man. He wanted her to sign a prenuptial agreement promising that she would ask for nothing if they divorced. When they eventually divorced in 1978, she honored that agreement.
“I couldn’t even go to art class because Steve expected his ‘old lady’ to be there every night with dinner on the table,” she recalled.
“Steve’s idea of hot was not me. He liked blond bimbos, and they were always around.”
Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in a scene from the 1972 movie “The Getaway.”
This marked the beginning of a particularly dark period in MacGraw’s life. When she arrived on the set of the 1978 film Convoy drunk and high, she decided it was time to quit drugs.
Leaving show business
At the same time, several of her movies, including Players (1970) and Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), failed at the box office.
“It’s brutal for women,” MacGraw told The Guardian about returning to show business in the late 1970s.
Getty Images
“I don’t think there’s a woman over 40 who’s ever been conspicuously in the spotlight who doesn’t get sick of the kind of questioning the media lays on you, the fashion industry, all of it. It’s cruel.”
MacGraw had enjoyed a brief period as a Hollywood superstar actress. Afterward, she decided to work in interior design instead, although she did not completely abandon show business. She appeared in the television miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and China Rose (1985), but soon her life would take another difficult turn.
Ali MacGraw simply could not find work in films, and she began to feel useless. At the same time, she felt incomplete without a partner, describing being in love as being like “a drug high”.
Ali MacGraw
Youtube/Parisvideostars
She felt lonely and desperate and began drinking heavily. In 1986, she checked herself into the Betty Ford Clinic in California.
“The worst stuff happened when I drank,” she said. “I lost my judgment; I fancied other women’s husbands.”
Family tragedies
Her son Josh Evans was 15 at the time and struggled to watch his mother suffer. MacGraw spent 30 days in group therapy and emerged as a stronger person.
In 1993, another family tragedy struck when her California home was destroyed by a wildfire. She then chose to leave Los Angeles and settled in a town near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Julien M. Hekimian/Getty Images for Chanel
“I live in a little village north of Santa Fe, New Mexico called Tesuque,” she revealed last year.
According to MacGraw, her neighbors do not view her as a former Hollywood star. Instead, they value her for the community work she has done.
For instance, she has volunteered at the annual International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ali MacGraw stepped away from acting, but in 2006, she returned to the stage. She reunited with her Love Story co-star Ryan O’Neal in the Broadway adaptation of the Danish film Festen.
Outside of Broadway, MacGraw has remained largely out of the spotlight for the past couple of decades. She has devoted herself to animal rights work and has also produced numerous successful yoga videos.
Ali MacGraw
Youtube/OWN
Speaking to the Herald-Tribune in 2019, MacGraw said that she remains open to new adventures and opportunities.
“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 bereft if I can’t. But I know that I’m not happy when I’m not doing something creative.”
Josh Evans – Ali MacGraw
Although Ali left acting, her family still remains connected to the entertainment industry. Her son Josh Evans is an actor and director who has built a strong reputation for himself in Hollywood.
He also bears a striking resemblance to his mother!
Josh Evans
Being the son of Hollywood celebrities Robert Evans and Ali MacGraw certainly brought plenty of pressure.
For Josh Evans, who was born in January 1971, however, show business was something he wanted to pursue almost from the beginning.
His first career ambition, though, was not in the movie business. He had never dreamed of becoming an actor, but it was simply something that happened along the way.
In 1989, Josh Evans had a small role in Dream a Little Dream (1989), but he wanted to take things further. As a teenager with little to lose, he would visit the manager’s office to look through breakdowns for movies that were being made.
Josh Evans – actor & director
That was where he met someone he recognized: famous director Oliver Stone. At the time, Stone was making Born on the Fourth of July, starring Tom Cruise. Josh wanted to be part of it.
“At the time I just knew [Oliver Stone] from Platoon. He was making a movie with Tom Cruise and there was a role for the little brother. I wanted to play that part, so he got me a meeting with Oliver Stone,” Josh Evans recalls.
“When I sat with him, Oliver asked ‘Oh, you think you look like Tom Cruise?’. Now knowing him, I realize he was mocking me, but I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ So, he said, ‘We’ll see what happens.’ Four months later, I got a call to audition and I got the part. It was very exciting and you could feel how special that movie was going to be.”
Since then, Josh has enjoyed a successful career both in front of and behind the camera. He starred in the biographical film The Doors in 1991 and has continued working as both an actor and director.
Josh Evans
Facebook/CathyScott
With eight films listed on his résumé as a director, he even had Michael Madsen starring in his 2015 movie Death in the Desert. But which side does he prefer?
“I am definitely more comfortable on the side of the camera that does not show myself,” Josh Evans says.
“If an interesting opportunity presents itself, I am not opposed to it. I think there are other people out there who are more qualified and want it more than I do. As far as directing and telling my stories, I would do that for free, whereas acting is more of a job, but I enjoy it once I do it.”
Josh Evans – family
Josh is a very handsome man, and his resemblance to his mother, Ali MacGraw, is remarkable, especially in his large, expressive eyes.
In 2019, his father and Ali’s former husband, Robert Evans, passed away. However, the family shared a wonderful memory of coming together for him when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.
Josh has been married twice. In October 2012, he married American singer and musician Roxy Saint. By that time, their son Jackson was two years old, and Grandma Ali MacGraw loves spending time with her wonderful family.
“He’s so wonderful,” MacGraw said about her son. “He’s my favorite human being on the planet, and he goes out with a girl I’m nuts about. Their relationship is so much about, among other things, friendship and respect.”
Ali MacGraw and Josh Evans are surely very proud of their wonderful family. We wish them all the best in the future, and who knows, perhaps we will see them together on the same stage or movie set someday?
