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Considered by many to be one of the greatest American actresses of all time, Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today`s great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Geraldine Sue Page was born on November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri to Dr. Leon Elwin Page, an osteopathic physician and Pearl Maize Page, a homemaker. She had an older brother named Donald. The family moved to Chicago when Page was five years old. Growing up, her interests and hobbies always were directed toward the arts. She tried writing and painting while younger, but that proved to be too frustrating. She wanted to be a concert pianist, but her family couldn`t afford all that training. While she was still a preteen, she joined the drama club at her church and soon found her passion. She began reading all kinds of plays as well as reading about actors. She was fascinated with the careers of actresses like Lucille La Verne, Maude Adams, and Eva Le Gallienne.

Upon graduation from high school in 1942, she entered the Goodman Theater School, where she performed in just about everything students could perform in, as well as earning money working for a children`s theater group. When she completed the three year program in 1945, she and several other students organized a summer stock theater in Lake Zurich, Illinois. After the summer season she headed for New York City. Unfortunaltly, by Christmas she was working three part time jobs just to get by and not finding any work as an actress. She returned to Chicago that winter and accepted a position as a part time instructor in the theater department at DuPaul University for the spring semester. After another summer at Lake Zurich, Miss Page headed for New York again, this time joining a stock company in Woodstock, New York. She spent the next two years spending summers at Lake Zurich, and the rest of the time performing in Woodstock playing everything from young girls to grandmothers.

In 1948, she made her New York city debut with an Off-Broadway production of "Seven Mirrors." She spent the next four years performing with Off-Broadway groups and summer stock in New Jersey. She also performed character parts on radio shows. In 1952 she had the lead in an Off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams` "Summer and Smoke". That production caused a sensation, not only with critics but with a growing audience marking the first big hit Off-Broadway. Page won the Drama Critics Award, becoming the first person from a non-Broadway production to receive such an award.

Page put off a number of film offers and instead played leading roles on radio and television and made her Broadway debut in January 1953 in Vina Delmar`s play "Mid-Summer." Although the play was dismissed by most critics, she was hailed by critics for her portrayal of an uneducated woman married to a schoolteacher.

In the fall of 1953, she made her film debut opposite John Wayne in the western "Hondo." Although she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, she wasn`t offered any good parts in Hollywood and returned to New York.

During the 1950s, Page`s theater career flourished. She played a variety of roles on Broadway including a vindictive wife of a homosexual in "The Immoralist," to a lonely spinster in "The Rainmaker." She also made frequent r