Career
Olson was signed to a film contract by Paramount Pictures in 1948 and, after a few supporting roles, producers began to consider her for more prominent parts. She was up for the role of Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 film Samson and Delilah, for which Olson later said she was not suited. When she was passed over in favor of Hedy Lamarr, Billy Wilder cast her for his upcoming project. In Sunset Boulevard (1950) she played Betty Schaefer, for which she garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her pairing with William Holden was considered a success and she appeared with him in three other films (Force of Arms, Union Station, and Submarine Command, all released in 1951), but none repeated their success in Sunset Boulevard. Other film credits include Big Jim McLain (1952), So Big (1953), and Battle Cry (1955).
Olson made several appearances in films for the Walt Disney studio. The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber paired her with Fred MacMurray and were popular with movie-goers. She also appeared alongside Hayley Mills in Pollyanna and Dean Jones in Snowball Express. Olson then moved to New York City where she appeared on Broadway.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she did guest roles on television, and has been retired since the mid 1980s, although she made a brief, uncredited appearance in Flubber, the 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Olson
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)