---
name: "Sylvia Sidney"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/sylvia-sidney"
fi1m_id: "sylvia-sidney"
imdb_id: "nm0796662"
tmdb_id: 528
wikidata_id: "Q231595"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "9 August 1910"
died: "1 July 1999"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 4
average_fi1m_score: 75
average_as: "actor"
average_over: 4
updated: "2026-09-27T09:15:29.500208+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Sylvia Sidney

## Identity

Sylvia Sidney

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/sylvia-sidney
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** sylvia-sidney
- **IMDb ID:** nm0796662
- **TMDB ID:** 528
- **Wikidata ID:** Q231595
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Sidney, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231595, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0796662/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/528

Actor. Born 9 August 1910 in The Bronx, New York, USA. Died 1 July 1999.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 9 August 1910, The Bronx, New York, USA
- **Died:** 1 July 1999
- **Active:** 1936–1996
- **Also known as:** Sophia Kosow, Sylvia Sydney, سیلویا سیدنی
- **Golden Globes:** 1 Golden Globe (1 won)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 75, as actor, over 4 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1930s 75 (2), 1980s 83 (1), 1990s 66 (1)
- **Score spread:** 1 at 80+, 3 at 60–79, 0 under 60
- **Lead roles:** 2 of 3 acting credits billed first or second
- **Genres:** Comedy 2, Crime 2, Drama 2, Fantasy 2, Science Fiction 1, Thriller 1
- **Screen time:** 6 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $186m across 2 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Sidney, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q231595, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0796662/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/528

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*Beetlejuice*](https://film.one/film/beetlejuice.md) (83), [*Sabotage*](https://film.one/film/sabotage.md) (77)
- **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Dead End*](https://film.one/film/dead-end.md) (73)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Sylvia Sidney

> Sylvia Sidney spent the 1930s playing the poor girl things are done to, and made the part worth watching by refusing to ask for pity. Fifty years later, in Tim Burton's films, the same unsparing face turned out to be funny.

Watch Sylvia Sidney in *Dead End* (1937) while somebody else is talking. Lillian Hellman's script gives Joel McCrea the speeches about how slum streets make criminals, and gives Sidney's Drina, a shop girl on strike trying to keep her kid brother off the corner, rather less to say. It does not matter. Her face is worn and decent and quick to anger, and she puts more into one look than the script hands her in a page. That was the whole of her method, and for most of the 1930s it was what Hollywood paid her for.

She was on Broadway at sixteen in 1926 and in films by the end of that decade, and *City Streets* (1931) made her a star at Paramount. What followed was a long run of leads in social dramas and crime films: two for Fritz Lang, *Fury* (1936) opposite Spencer Tracy among them, one for Alfred Hitchcock, and several with George Raft as her screen partner. The parts were nearly all the same part. *You Only Live Once* (1937) and *Dead End* came out the same year and could have swapped heroines without much rewriting. The studios saw a girl who suffered well and kept casting her to suffer.

The complaint is fair, and it misses what she did with the type. She did not play the working girl as a victim; she played her as someone too busy to be one, and the anger was what made the decency mean anything. We spent McCrea's speeches in *Dead End* watching her instead, and the case that sounded like a pamphlet in his mouth was plainly true in her face; it was the one stretch of the film that moved us. Bogart walks off with that picture, and our review says so, but it is not her fault. She is top billed and the script left her a look at a time.

She went back to the stage in the 1950s and did not return to films until *Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams* (1973), a supporting part as a mother in a family drama. Then came Tim Burton. In *Beetlejuice* (1988) she is Juno, caseworker to the recently dead, the voice gone to gravel after a lifetime of cigarettes, the manner of a civil servant who has heard every excuse. She said of the script, "I turned it down so many times because I couldn't understand the script," and she plays it as though she understood it perfectly: dry, unsentimental, and never once winking at the audience. Burton wrote Grandma Norris in *Mars Attacks* (1996) for her, and it was her last film.

The two performances we would send a reader to are fifty-one years apart. Start with Drina, then Juno. The eyes are the same, the impatience is the same, and neither woman ever asks you to feel sorry for her.

## Biography

Sylvia Sidney was an American actress whose career in stage, film and television spanned more than seventy years. Born Sophia Kosow in the Bronx, New York, she rose to prominence in the 1930s with numerous leading roles in Hollywood films.

She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in *Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams* (1973). In later decades she appeared in films including *Damien: Omen II* (1978) and *Mars Attacks!* (1996), and on television in series such as *Starsky & Hutch* and *The Love Boat*.

Sidney is known to later audiences for her role as Juno in Tim Burton's *Beetlejuice* (1988), for which she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, jwa.org.*

## On Fi1m (4)

- *Mars Attacks!* (1996), Fi1m 66, as Grandma Norris — [page](https://film.one/film/mars-attacks.md)
- *Beetlejuice* (1988), Fi1m 83, as Juno — [page](https://film.one/film/beetlejuice.md)
- *Dead End* (1937), Fi1m 73, as Drina — [page](https://film.one/film/dead-end.md)
- *Sabotage* (1936), Fi1m 77, as Mrs. Verloc — [page](https://film.one/film/sabotage.md)

## Complete filmography (101)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Fantasy Island* (1998), series, as Clia
- *Mars Attacks!* (1996), as Grandma Norris — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/film/mars-attacks.md)
- *Diagnosis: Murder* (1993), series, as Alice
- *Used People* (1992), as Becky
- *Andre's Mother* (1990), as Mrs. Downes
- *Dear John* (1988), series, as Mrs. Lumenski
- *Beetlejuice* (1988), as Juno — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/film/beetlejuice.md)
- *The Witching of Ben Wagner* (1987), as Grammy (Regina's Grandmother)
- *thirtysomething* (1987), series, Actor
- *Pals* (1987), as Fern Stobbs
- *The Equalizer* (1985), series, as Judge
- *An Early Frost* (1985), as Beatrice McKenna
- *Finnegan Begin Again* (1985), as Margaret
- *Going Hollywood: The '30s* (1984), as (archive footage)
- *Copkiller* (1983), as Margaret Smith
- *The Brass Ring* (1983), as Grandmother
- *Having It All* (1982), as Marney
- *Hammett* (1982), as Donaldina Cameron
- *Come Along with Me* (1982), as Mrs. Flanner
- *American Playhouse* (1982), series, as Mrs. Flanner, Mrs. Downs
- *A Small Killing* (1981), as Sadie Ross
- *Magnum, P.I.* (1980), series, as Elizabeth Barrett
- *The Shadow Box* (1980), as Felicity
- *F.D.R.: The Last Year* (1980), as Cousin Polly
- *The Gossip Columnist* (1980), as Alma Lewellyn
- *Supertrain* (1979), series, as Agatha Wills
- *WKRP in Cincinnati* (1978), series, as Lillian Carlson
- *Kaz* (1978), series, as Molly
- *Damien - Omen II* (1978), as Aunt Marion
- *Siege* (1978), as Lillian Gordon
- *The Love Boat* (1977), series, as Natalie Corson
- *I Never Promised You a Rose Garden* (1977), as Miss Coral
- *Snowbeast* (1977), as Mrs. Carrie Rill
- *Eight Is Enough* (1977), series, as Aunt Fealty
- *Raid on Entebbe* (1976), as Dora Bloch
- *God Told Me To* (1976), as Elizabeth Mullin
- *Death at Love House* (1976), as Clara Josephs
- *Starsky & Hutch* (1975), series, as Olga Grossman
- *Winner Take All* (1975), as Anne Barclay
- *The Secret Night Caller* (1975), as Kitty
- *Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams* (1973), as Mrs. Pritchard - Rita's Mother
- *Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate* (1971), as Elizabeth Gibson
- *The Defenders* (1961), series, as Adela Collins
- *Special for Women* (1960), series, as Minna Borden
- *Route 66* (1960), series, as Lonnie Taylor, Hannah Ellis
- *My Three Sons* (1960), series, as Miss Houk
- *The DuPont Show with June Allyson* (1959), series, as Beulah Ridges
- *Naked City* (1958), series, as Florence Nunda
- *No Time at All* (1958), as Mrs. Kramer
- *The Helen Morgan Story* (1957), as Lulu Morgan
- *Playhouse 90* (1956), series, as Mrs. Kramer
- *Behind the High Wall* (1956), as Hilda Carmichael
- *Man on the Ledge* (1955), as Mrs. Cosick
- *The 20th Century Fox Hour* (1955), series, as Mrs. Cosick
- *Playwrights '56* (1955), series, Actor
- *Violent Saturday* (1955), as Elsie Braden
- *Climax!* (1954), series, as Louella Wheedron
- *Kraft Television Theatre* (1953), series, Actor
- *General Electric Theater* (1953), series, as Gloria Roma
- *The Ford Television Theatre* (1952), series, as Laura Blake
- *Les Miserables* (1952), as Fantine
- *Schlitz Playhouse of Stars* (1951), series, Actor
- *Tales of Tomorrow* (1951), series, Actor
- *Lux Video Theatre* (1950), series, as Joyce, Laura Barrie
- *Cameo Theatre* (1950), series, Actor
- *Screen Snapshots 1860: Howdy, Podner* (1949), as Sylvia Sidney
- *The Philco Television Playhouse* (1948), series, Actor
- *Love from a Stranger* (1947), as Cecily Harrington
- *Kraft Television Theatre* (1947), series, Actor
- *The Searching Wind* (1946), as Cassie Bowman
- *Mr. Ace* (1946), as Margaret Wyndham Chase
- *Blood on the Sun* (1945), as Iris Hilliard
- *The Wagons Roll at Night* (1941), as Flo Lorraine
- *One Third of a Nation* (1939), as Mary Rogers
- *You and Me* (1938), as Helen Roberts
- *Dead End* (1937), as Drina — Fi1m 73, [page](https://film.one/film/dead-end.md)
- *You Only Live Once* (1937), as Joan Graham
- *Sabotage* (1937), as Mrs. Verloc — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/film/sabotage.md)
- *Fury* (1936), as Katherine Grant
- *The Trail of the Lonesome Pine* (1936), as June Tolliver
- *Mary Burns, Fugitive* (1935), as Mary Burns
- *Accent on Youth* (1935), as Linda Brown
- *Behold My Wife!* (1934), as Tonita Storm Cloud
- *Thirty Day Princess* (1934), as Nancy Lane / Princess Catterina
- *Good Dame* (1934), as Lillie Taylor
- *Jennie Gerhardt* (1933), as Jennie Gerhardt
- *Pick-up* (1933), as Mary Richards
- *Madame Butterfly* (1932), as Cho-cho San
- *Make Me a Star* (1932), as Sylvia Sidney (uncredited)
- *Merrily We Go to Hell* (1932), as Joan Prentice
- *The Miracle Man* (1932), as Helen Smith aka Helen Vail
- *Ladies of the Big House* (1931), as Kathleen Storm McNeil
- *Street Scene* (1931), as Rose Maurrant
- *An American Tragedy* (1931), as Roberta 'Bert' Alden
- *Confessions of a Co-Ed* (1931), as Patricia Harper
- *The House That Shadows Built* (1931), as (archive footage)
- *City Streets* (1931), as Nan Cooley
- *Five Minutes from the Station* (1930), as Carrie Adams
- *Thru Different Eyes* (1929), as Valerie Briand
- *Broadway Nights* (1927), as Performer
- *The Sorrows of Satan* (1926), as Bridesmaid (uncredited)

## Gallery

- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-ce3259ae12c6.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — CINEGRAF magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Sylvia_Sidney_Argentinean_Magazine_AD_%28corp%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Embassy Theater - 8 Apr MC - Allentown PA (1936)](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-3b8d685c15c3.jpg) Embassy Theater - 8 Apr MC - Allentown PA (1936) — Self-Scanned, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/1936_-_Embassy_Theater_-_8_Apr_MC_-_Allentown_PA.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Believed to be public domain as it lacks a copyright notice and registration. Cropped from a scan at Heritage Auctions. Will definitively be considered public d (1931)](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-7ff5b70ddaeb.jpg) Believed to be public domain as it lacks a copyright notice and registration. Cropped from a scan at Heritage Auctions. Will definitively be considered public d (1931) — Paramount Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/An_American_Tragedy_%281931%29_Lobby_Card.jpg/1280px-An_American_Tragedy_%281931%29_Lobby_Card.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![James Cagney & Sylvia Sidney in Blood on the Sun - cropped screenshot (original image : see source) (1945)](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-6a7e3fb563de.jpg) James Cagney & Sylvia Sidney in Blood on the Sun - cropped screenshot (original image : see source) (1945) — film screenshot (United Artists), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Blood_on_the_Sun_%281945%29_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-db0a8d5448e3.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-ee298c8f7f18.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-e4db5e171962.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB
- ![Sylvia Sidney & James Cagney in Blood on the Sun - cropped screenshot (1945)](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-c54cc9aa1d94.jpg) Sylvia Sidney & James Cagney in Blood on the Sun - cropped screenshot (1945) — film screenshot (William Cagney Productions / United Artists), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Blood_on_the_Sun_%281945%29_2.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Forward 26 November 1933 Page 17](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-85238a9694d9.jpg) Forward 26 November 1933 Page 17 — Jewish Daily Forward, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Forward_26_November_1933_Page_17.jpg/1280px-Forward_26_November_1933_Page_17.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-64eb3dd04755.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-6177fdaf38d8.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB
- ![Sylvia Sidney](https://film.one/media/person/119188/gallery-58466807bf68.jpg) Sylvia Sidney — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated

- 1974: Best Supporting Actress (nominated), for *Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams*

### Golden Globes — 1 won

- 1986: Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (won), for *An Early Frost*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/sylvia-sidney