Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty: All About the Iconic Sister-Brother Duo

Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are both well-respected actors in Hollywood — and they’re siblings. MacLaine is Beatty’s older sister, and the pair grew up going to the movies together and developing a love of acting when they were young.

“Warren was the beautiful one in the family,” MacLaine told The Guardian in 2007. “That was the given. I didn't see myself that way.”

MacLaine is one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, revered for her acting, singing and dancing skills. She has appeared in classics like What a Way to Go! and The Apartment, as well as modern hits like Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias. Beatty rose to fame in movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Splendor in the Grass, and found success as a writer, director and actor for movies like Reds.

The pair have never worked on a project together, but they’re supportive of each other’s careers. And even as an adult, MacLaine is still very much a big sister to her little brother. “I’m three years older and I’m protective,” she told USA Today in 2017.

Read on to learn about their sister-brother relationship and their careers in Hollywood.

They were born in Richmond, Virginia

MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty on April 24, 1934. Henry Warren Beatty, né Beaty, was born on March 30, 1937. When they began acting, MacLaine adapted her middle name as her stage name and Beatty altered the spelling of their last name. Their parents, Ira Owens Beaty and Kathlyn MacLean Beaty, named their daughter after Shirley Temple and Beatty after a great-great-grandfather.

"I was lucky to grow up with a feminist mother and a feminist sister. We're very close," Beatty once told PEOPLE.

With their parents’ encouragement, they both began working in entertainment in high school: Beatty worked at a theater in Washington, D.C., and MacLaine appeared in the chorus of Oklahoma! on Broadway. “I would say that both of them encouraged a high level of self-esteem in both kids,” Beatty told The Guardian in 1999. “Shirley and I didn’t have parents who were engaged in pointing out limitations.”

They’ve both won Academy Awards

MacLaine has been in more than 50 movies and many theater productions, including some on Broadway. Beatty has been in more than 25 films and has written and directed several, including Love Affair and Dick Tracy.

They’ve both won Academy Awards. MacLaine won Best Actress in 1984 for Terms of Endearment, and Beatty won Best Director for Reds in 1982 and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his career in producing in 1999.

MacLaine and Beatty both have children of their own

MacLaine was married to the late Steve Parker from 1954 to 1982. They welcomed a daughter, actress Sachi Parker, and had an unconventional relationship for the time.

“We were friends, and I guess you could say practiced an open marriage, in 1954, which was another lifetime,” she told PEOPLE in 2016. “No one understood it, we did. He lived in Japan basically, I lived in America working, and this and that.”

Beatty dated stars like Diane Keaton, Julie Christie and Madonna before marrying Annette Bening. When he first met his future wife at lunch in preparation for their upcoming movie Bugsy, he told director Barry Levinson, “I’m going to marry her.”

They married in 1992 and have since welcomed four children.

They have opposite priorities when it comes to work

MacLaine has famously been called a workaholic, including by her daughter, who lived primarily with her father in Japan so her mother could focus on her career. Sachi even wrote a memoir, Lucky Me: My Life With — and Without — My Mom, Shirley MacLaine. But when the book came out, MacLaine called the book “virtually all fiction.”

Speaking about her own work ethic, MacLaine told PEOPLE in 2019, “I don’t want to quit acting — I really don’t. Even at my age, I have four pictures to do next year.”

Beatty is a self-admitted perfectionist who has sometimes been consumed by the projects he undertakes. In both 1979 and 1982, he was nominated simultaneously for Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the Academy Awards — and he’s the only person in Academy history to accomplish that twice.

But Beatty has devoted most of his time in the past 30 years to his family. "People always ask why I don't work more,” he told PEOPLE in 2016. “The truth is, it's because I've also had a life.”

Beatty continued: "The biggest thing that's ever happened to me is my children and Annette. That's bigger than fame, and it came not a moment too soon."

They haven’t always seen eye to eye

MacLaine isn’t just an actor — she has written many best-selling books about metaphysics and spirituality, and has spoken extensively about her belief in past lives. Beatty, she told The Guardian in 2007, was less open to alternative philosophies, and there were times when the siblings weren’t on speaking terms.

“Now is not one of them,” she said. “We are fine now. I think we've been through a couple of lifetimes together. He's going through his left-brain intellectual lifetime now. He's on a very different path to me. But his kids are very interested in what I'm saying.”

MacLaine has also been critical of Beatty’s past romantic decisions. “You know, we are both old people now, and he is respectful to his old lovers,” she added. “I like to remind him as often as possible that I am the senior here, so you'd better listen to me.”

They are still protective of each other

Beatty and co-presenter Faye Dunaway famously flubbed the Best Picture announcement at the 2017 Oscars after the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers gave them the wrong envelope. The pair announced La La Land as the winner — and the whole cast and production team came up on stage — before the film's producer, Jordan Horowitz, correctly identified Moonlight as the real winner.

The firm later took responsibility for the error, but in the moment, it looked like Beatty and Dunaway had made a major mistake. MacLaine was in the audience that night, having presented an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

“I think we’re all processing the horror of it,” she told USA Today of the ordeal. “I’m still dealing with it.”

MacLaine said that she tried to reach him by phone while he was still backstage, but she could only reach his wife Bening. “I’m concerned with how [Beatty] must have felt being so close to him,” she said. “I’m three years older and I’m protective. We know how difficult it was for him, but it was also for me.”