Shirley MacLaine five competitive Golden Globe Awards, and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 1998 ceremony. Named after actress Shirley Temple (who was six years old at the time), Shirley MacLean Beaty was born on April 24, 1934, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. MacLaine's younger brother is the actor, writer, and director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor.
How to Survive a Plague was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in the 85th Academy Awards. The film also won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary and a Peabody Award. It was nominated for a Directors Guild Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Critic A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" named "How to Survive a Plague" one of the best five documentaries of 2012. Fellow "New York Times" critic Stephen Holden called the documentary the eighth best film of 2012. It also won Documentary of the Year at Attitude magazine's Attitude Awards 2013.