"William Holden (April 17, 1918 – ca. November 12, 1981) was an Academy Award-winning American film actor. He was named one of the ""Top 10 stars of the year"" six times (1954-1958, 1961) and appeared on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list as #25.Born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, he was the eldest of three sons of William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist, and Mary Blanche Ball, a teacher. The family, who moved to South Pasadena, California when he was three, was of English descent; Holden's paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors immigrated to the U.S. in the 17th century from Millenback, Lancaster, England.After graduating from South Pasadena High School, while attending Pasadena Junior College, he became involved in local radio plays. Contrary to legend and theatre publicity, he did not study at the Pasadena Playhouse, nor was he discovered in a play there. Rather, he was spotted by a talent scout from Paramount Pictures in 1937 while appearing as an old man in a play at the Playbox, a private theatre owned by Pasadena Playhouse director Gilmor Brown. His first film role was in Prison Farm the following year.His first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), in which he played a violinist turned boxer.

After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II, where he acted in training films. Beginning in 1950, his career rebounded when Billy Wilder tapped him to star as the down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis who is taken in by faded silent-screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard, for which Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.Following this breakthrough film, he played a series of roles that combined good looks with cynical detachment, including the prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in Stalag 17 (1953), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. However, Holden said he thought Burt Lancaster should have won for From Here to Eternity. According to interviews with cast members on the Stalag 17 Special Edition DVD, Holden was told by his wife that he didn't win for Stalag 17; it was a belated (and overdue) win for Sunset Boulevard. Holden's acceptance speech for his Academy Award was among the shortest on record: ""Thank you!"""