Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 – April 7, 2001) was an American theatre, film, and television actress. Hers remains the shortest acting performance in a film to win an Oscar. In her winning role in the 1976 film Network, she was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest time ever for the winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also received an Emmy nomination for her role in The Dain Curse. Straight can also be recognized as Dr. Lesh in Poltergeist.
Born in Old Westbury, New York, Straight was the daughter of investment banker Willard Dickerman Straight and Dorothy Payne Whitney. She was four years old when her father died in France of influenza during the great epidemic while serving with the US Army during World War I.
Following her mother's remarriage to British agronomist Leonard K. Elmhirst in 1925, the family moved to England. It was there that Straight was educated and began acting in amateur theater productions.
Returning to the United States, she made her Broadway debut in 1939 in the play The Possessed. Most of her theatre work was in the classics, including Twelfth Night (1941), Macbeth, and The Crucible (1953), for which
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