"Mrs. Robinson was using sex as a way to diffuse this rage inside of herself," she told The Times in 2000, more than 30 years after the film's debut.
"The rage was about her dreams not coming true, her youth being gone. She's out to assuage all these terrible feelings she has. And the only thing she has been able to find, since art was taken away from her -- you see, she studied art in college -- is sex. It's easy. So having this naive little kid, Benjamin, that Dustin Hoffman played, teaching him everything she liked and wanted -- what could be better? She uses sex to forget. She just punished everybody and everything, and used the sex."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday June 09, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 46 words Type of Material: Correction
Bancroft obituary -- The obituary of actress Anne Bancroft in Wednesday's Section A said she earned an Emmy in 1970 for the special "Annie -- The Woman in the Life of Men." In fact, the title was "Annie, The Women in the Life of a Man."
Glamorous and frosty in "The Graduate," Bancroft easily morphed into a mother superior in "Agnes of God," an aging ballerina in "The Turning Point," a wily U.S. senator in "G.I. Jane," and even Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier for Broadway's "Golda."
"She can do anything. She could play Queen Victoria in a minute. She's a magnificent actress in every possible respect," director Penn told The Times in 1997.
He added Tuesday that if Bancroft had concentrated solely on the stage, "I have no doubt she would have become the true first lady of the American theater."
In Penn's view, her great strength was "her emotional availability. She could draw on her emotions. They were available to her. That is very hard for people to do night after night and play after play. To be able to do what she was doing was extraordinary."
Champlin said Tuesday that Bancroft "was one of the best actresses of her generation, of our time. Look at 'The Miracle Worker.' She became that character. It was a miraculous portrayal...."
"She acted with a terrific intensity," Champlin added. "She could lose herself in a part, and she just became whoever she was playing. Good actresses can always do that, of course, but some can do it more than others. That was Anne."
It didn't start out that way. She was born in the Bronx, N.Y., as Anna Maria Louisa Italiano on Sept. 17, 1931.
After studying at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1948, then credited as Anne Marno, she began acting in live television in 1950 on such programs as the drama anthology "Studio One."
Signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox, she moved to Hollywood in 1952 and chose her stage name -- Bancroft, because it sounded dignified -- from a list handed to her by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck.
