TiVo Alert: Shirley MacLaine to Play Coco Chanel on Lifetime Tonight 9/13

Tonight, September 13th, 2008 at 8PM Lifetime Network will premiere the made-for-TV movie "Coco Chanel". Shirley MacLaine will be portraying the title character. Malcolm McDowell and Barbora Bobulova also star. Check your local listings.

"Coco Chanel" is the rags-to-riches tale charting the rise of one of the most influential fashion icons of the 20th century. From her humble childhood in a French orphanage, through her early days as a young dressmaker's assistant, to her passionate and tragic love with a dashing Englishman, and ultimately to her success as a pioneering icon, "Coco Chanel" is the story of a glamorous woman who was hard to love and harder to ignore.

MacLaine, who is 74, is known as much for her blithely unconventional persona (and her New Age beliefs) as she is for a career that has spanned theatre, film and television. MacLaine, who made her Broadway debut in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Me and Juliet, brought to life the cliché of the understudy becoming a star when she performed the role of Gladys (the Carol Haney role) in The Pajama Game. The first time she went on for Haney, she was a hit despite her mistakes; the second time, MacLaine knew all her lines. Paramount Picture's Hal B. Wallis was in the audience, and put her under contract to the studio.

MacLaine won an Oscar for her performance in Terms of Endearment and was also nominated for her work in The Turning Point, Irma la Douce (based on the Broadway musical), The Apartment, Some Came Running and The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir, a documentary that she wrote and co-directed. She was an Emmy Award-winner for the TV special "Gypsy in My Soul," and was nominated for three others. Other screen credits include Can-Can, Ocean's Eleven (she was considered an honorary female member of The Rat Pack), The Children's Hour, Two for the Seesaw, Sweet Charity, Being There, Steel Magnolias, Postcards from the Edge, The Evening Star (a sequel to Terms of Endearment) and Bewitched. MacLaine, who is the sister of Warren Beatty, has penned several volumes of memoirs.

She starred in Shirley MacLaine and Shirley MacLaine on Broadway in 1976 and 1984, respectively. Featuring songs by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, the first revue was written by Fred Ebb, while the second had MacLaine singing songs by Marvin Hamlisch, Christopher Adler and Larry Grossman. In both previous shows, MacLaine was supported by back-up performers.

For more information please visit http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/movies/coco-chanel

Photo Credit James Sims