Early Life
Beatty was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Margaret Fortney (née Lennis) and Charles William Beatty. He is not related to actor Warren Beatty. He has a sister, Mary Margaret. Before Beatty became an actor in 1947, he began singing in gospel and barbershop quartets in St. Matthews, Kentucky, and at his local church. He received a scholarship to sing in the a cappella choir at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky; he attended but did not graduate.
In 1956, he made his stage debut at age 19, appearing in Wilderness Road, an outdoor-historical pageant located in Berea, Kentucky and he worked in the Louisville area through the mid-1960s, at the Clarksville Little Theater (Indiana) and the recently founded Actors Theater of Louisville. His time at the latter included a run as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, in 1966. However, the first ten years of Beatty's career were spent at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, which holds the distinction of being The State Theatre of Virginia.
Read more about this topic: Ned Beatty
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“That man is to be pitied who cannot enjoy social intercourse without eating and drinking. The lowest orders, it is true, cannot imagine a cheerful assembly without the attractions of the table, and this reflection alone should induce all who aim at intellectual culture to endeavor to avoid placing the choicest phases of social life on such a basis.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)