Early life and career

Miles was born Sylvia Reuben Lee in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the daughter of Belle (née

Married and maiden names

A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Fellman) and Reuben Lee, a furniture maker.

Miles played the role of "Sally" in the pilot episode of what would become The Dick Van Dyke Show

The Dick Van Dyke Show

The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom that initially aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from October 3, 1961, until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was produced by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff....

, which was later taken by Rose Marie

Rose Marie

Rose Marie is an American actress. As a child performer she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie....

 for the series. She also appeared in an episode of Naked City

Naked City (TV series)

Naked City is a police drama series which aired from 1958 to 1963 on the ABC television network. It was inspired by the 1948 motion picture of the same name, and mimics its dramatic "semi-documentary" format....

as a lovely barfly attempting to communicate with a psychotic

Psychosis

Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...

 Jack Warden

Jack Warden

Jack Warden was an American character actor.-Early life:Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. and John Warden Lebzelter, who was an engineer and technician. He was of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry...

.

She is perhaps best known for her role in the movie Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...

as a wealthy woman who invites Joe Buck (Jon Voight

Jon Voight

Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....

) up to her apartment for sex, seemingly unaware that he is a prostitute, which earned her an Oscar nomination in 1969 for Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

. She received a second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for her role in Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely (1975 film)

Farewell, My Lovely is a neo-noir film directed by Dick Richards and featuring Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling. The picture is based on the novel Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.-Plot:...

.

Miles was part of an all-star cast in the 1982 Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

 murder mystery Evil Under the Sun

Evil Under the Sun

Evil Under the Sun is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1941 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October of the same year...

, portraying a Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 producer. She played a real estate agent in 1987's Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

, directed by Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...

.

Over the years, the still very active Miles has become a cult figure known for her ties to the avant-garde (Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, Paul Morrissey

Paul Morrissey

Paul Morrissey is an American film director, best-known for his association with Andy Warhol.Morrissey attended Ampleforth College, a private Roman Catholic boarding school and Fordham University, both Roman Catholic schools, and later served in the United States Army...

, etc.) and her increasingly bizarre appearance over the years and her willingness to attend any public function. Wayland Flowers

Wayland Flowers

Wayland P. Flowers, Jr. was an American puppeteer. He was born and raised in Dawson, Georgia. Flowers was best known for the puppet act he created with his puppet Madame...

 and his puppet Madame first uttered the widely quoted line "Sylvia Miles and Andy Warhol would attend the opening of a sewer." She gained some notoriety for an incident in a New York restaurant, when she publicly dumped a plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce onto critic John Simon

John Simon (critic)

John Ivan Simon is an American author and literary, theater, and film critic.-Personal life:Simon was born in Subotica, Bačka, County of Bačka, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later, known as Yugoslavia . He is of Hungarian descent...

 as revenge for his comments about her body in a review.

Her most recent acting appearances include roles on Sex and the City

Sex and the City

Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...

, One Life to Live

One Life to Live

One Life to Live is an American soap opera which debuted on July 15, 1968 and has been broadcast on the ABC television network. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature racially and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social...

, and the films Go Go Tales

Go Go Tales

Go Go Tales is an independent 2007 film by Abel Ferrara. It was screened out of competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.It stars Willem Dafoe as a strip club owner and co-stars Bob Hoskins...

and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (reprising her role from the first film, as a real estate agent).

External links