Jan Sterling

After a long bout with diabetes, a broken hip, and a number of strokes, Jan Sterling died on March 26, 2004, in Los Angeles, California, a few days before her 84th birthday. The couple has a little daughter and spends all their spare time on the ranch they own in Texas. Inactive for nearly two decades, she made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001. Stowe is married to actor Brian Benben, with whom she acted in a TV film in 1981. They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993. In 1998 she came back and acted in The Proposition, her first film after this interruption . In the 70s she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker. Stowe left in 1996 her work for a few years in order to concentrate on motherhood.

Herbert Hoover in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House. She was a touching blind musician in the thriller Blink, co-starring Aidan Quinn, and a sympathetic psychiatrist in the science-fiction movie Twelve Monkeys. She retired from films in favor of the stage in 1969 and returned before the cameras in 1976 to portray Mrs. Director Robert Altman encouraged Stowe to play a part in Short Cuts, in which she gave one of her best screen performances. Married and divorced to actor John Merivale (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0580881/) in the 40s, Sterling's career slipped down after the death of her second husband, actor Paul Douglas, in 1959. Thereafter, several roles in major films followed. During the following years, she appears regularly in movies like Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Kathy O, and The Female Animal. In 1992 Stowe finally had her big chance when she was offered a leading role in The Last of the Mohicans, together with Daniel Day-Lewis.

Also the same year, she travelled to England to play the role of Julia in the first film version of George Orwell's 1984, despite being several months pregnant at the time. A few of her interpretations of this period became however well-known to the public, as it was the case of Stakeout, in 1987, opposite Richard Dreyfuss, and Revenge, in 1990, co-starring Kevin Costner. In 1954 Sterling was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her great performance in The High and the Mighty. Stowe performed during nearly fifteen years mostly in minor roles as supporting actress in TV films and cinema movies. Shuttling between films and television, she showed up in nearly all the major live anthologies of the 1950s, stood out in such 'bad girl' film roles in Caged (1950), The Big Carnival [aka 'Ace in the Hole'] (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955), while making a more sympathetic impression in Sky Full of Moon (1952). Not too interested in her classes, Stowe volunteered doing performances at the Solaris, a Beverly Hills theater, where a movie agent saw her in a play, and got her offers for several appearances in TV films and cinema movies. In 1948 she broke into films supporting the Academy Award winner Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda, in a key, emotional role. She then studied cinema and journalism at Southern California University.

Then, the actrees Ruth Gordon insisted she change her stage name and the two hit upon 'Jan Sterling'. When she was 10, Stowe began taking piano lessons with the aim to become a concert pianist, but she gave up when her instructor died some years later. Seldom cast in passive roles, Sterling was at her best in parts calling for hard-bitten, sometimes hard-boiled determination. Her father suffered from multiple sclerosis, which threw a shadow of sadness over her childhood. As a teenager she returned to Manhattan, and billed as Jane Sterling, made her first Broadway appearance in Bachelor Born and went on to appear in such major stage offerings as Panama Hattie, Over 21 and Present Laughter. In 1947, she made her movies debut in Tycoon, now billed as Jane Darian. Her father was North American and her mother had immigrated from Costa Rica when she was a young woman. She was schooled by private tutors in London and Paris, and was enrolled in Fay Compton's dramatic school in London. She was born in Eagle Rock, a community next to Los Angeles, California, as the eldest of three sisters.

Sterling was educated in private schools before heading to Europe with her family. Madeleine Stowe (born August 18, 1958) is an American actress. Jan Sterling was born Jane Sterling Adriance on April 3, 1921, in New York City, NY, into a prosperous family. Stakeout (1987). One of Hollywood's most talented and versatile stars, often cool and stunning blonde in Hollywood film noir movies of the 1940s and '50s, the actrees Jan Sterling ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy roles in soaps, crime action and comedies. Worth Winning (1989). Tropical Snow (1989).

Revenge (1990). The Two Jakes (1990). Closet Land (1991). Unlawful Entry (1992).

The Last of the Mohicans (1992). Another Stakeout (1993). Short Cuts (1993). Blink (1994).

China Moon (1994). Bad Girls (1994). Twelve Monkeys (1995). The Proposition (1998).

Playing by Heart (1998). The General's Daughter (1999). Impostor (2002). We Were Soldiers (2002).

Avenging Angelo (2002). Octane (2003).