US screen star Shelley Winters hospitalised

LOS ANGELES: Double Oscar-winner Shelley Winters, one of the most respected actresses of Hollywood's golden era, has been rushed to hospital in Los Angeles, officials said on Wednesday.   

The 85-year-old star of the 1972 movie classic The Poseidon Adventure was in "fair" condition after being admitted to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre suffering an unspecified ailment, the hospital said.   

"She was admitted to our hospital. She is in fair condition," hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Harding told reporters.

Winters, who was in a wheelchair when she celebrated her 85th birthday in August, started out in Hollywood as an unconventional beauty who became best-known for her role as an overweight victim in the adaptation of Paul Gallico's shipwreck drama Poseidon.    

She won two Academy Awards for best supporting actress for her roles in the 1959 film The Diary Of Anne Frank and for A Patch Of Blue (1965), as well as an Oscar nomination for her role in Poseidon.    

The outspoken star who has written several "tell-all" biographies that shook up Tinseltown, was a roommate of the young Marilyn Monroe and was married to the late Italian actor Vittorio Gassman.   

Winters has performed in around 130 movies in a career spanning six decades that began with an uncredited part in 1943's What a Woman!. Her last film appearance was in La Bomba in 1999.