Otherworldly Facts About Sylvia Sidney, The Actress With A Rollercoaster Life
Sylvia Sidney might have ended up as the iconic caseworker in Beetlejuice, but her real-life path to getting there was even wilder than anything that happened in the movie!
1. Things Were Rocky
Born in the Bronx in New York City in 1910, Sidney didn’t have the easiest start in life. Her family fell apart before she even knew it—her mom and dad divorced when she was still very young. Her mother remarried not too long after, and things ultimately went well there. But that didn’t make it easier to cope.
2. She Didn’t Like People
Sylvia Sidney ended up being a pretty shy kid. Perhaps this came from growing up an only child, or from not being close to her biological father. Either way, her reluctance to socialize became alarming enough to her parents for them to take action. You might just find their approach to helping her a little bit unusual, though.
3. They Put Her Out There
To quell Sidney’s timidity, her parents encouraged her to study the arts, specifically acting. In what likely served as a total surprise to her parents, she took to acting like a fish to water. In fact, she decided in her early teens she wanted to take things seriously. And her parents, once again, reacted in a most unusual way.
4. They Pushed Her Forward
Lots of parents might not take their 15-year-old’s lofty aspirations seriously, but Sidney’s parents did. They enrolled her in the Theater Guild’s School for Acting. By 1926, Sidney landed her first onscreen role with The Sorrows of Satan in 1926. She only worked as an extra, but it did lead to more work—more frightening work, that is.
