Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney (born Ninnian Joseph Yule Jr.; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor. In a career spanning nearly nine decades, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent-film era. He was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941, and one of the best-paid actors of that era. At the height of a career ultimately marked by declines and comebacks, Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized the mainstream United States self-image.

At the peak of his career between ages 15 and 25, he made 43 films, and was one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most consistently successful actors. A versatile performer, he became a celebrated character actor later in his career. Laurence Olivier once said he considered Rooney "the best there has ever been". Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles in National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said Rooney was "the closest thing to a genius" with whom he had ever worked. He won a Golden Globe Award in 1982 and an Emmy Award in the same year for the title role in a television movie Bill and was awarded the Academy Honorary Award in 1982.

Rooney first performed in vaudeville as a child actor, and made his film debut at the age of six. He played the title character in the "Mickey McGuire" series of 78 short films, from age seven to 13. At 14 and 15, he played Puck in the play and subsequent film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At the age of 16, he began playing Andy Hardy, and gained his first recognition at 17 as Whitey Marsh in Boys Town. At the 12th Academy Awards, when he was 19 years old, Rooney became the second-youngest Best Actor in a Leading Role nominee and the first teenager to be nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Mickey Moran in the 1939 film adaptation of the coming-of-age Broadway musical Babes in Arms; he was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award in 1939. Rooney received his second Academy Award nomination in the same category for his role as Homer Macauley in The Human Comedy.