Spencer Tracy, i sin helhet Spencer Bonaventure Tracy, (född 5 april 1900, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA - död 10 juni 1967, Beverly Hills, Kalifornien), grovt huggen amerikansk filmstjärna som var en av Hollywoods största manliga huvudroller och den första skådespelare för att få två Oscar-utmärkelsen i rad för bästa skådespelare.
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Som ungdom uttråkade sig Tracy av skolarbetet och gick med i den amerikanska marinen vid 17 års ålder. Trots hans missnöje med akademiker blev han så småningom en studenter vid Wisconsin Ripon College. Medan han var där, testade han och vann en roll i början och upptäckte att han var mer till sin smak än medicin. 1922 åkte han till New York, där han och hans vän Pat O'Brien skrev in på American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Samma år gjorde båda männen sin gemensamma Broadway-debut, och spelade bitroller som robotar i Karel Čapeks RUR. Under de kommande åtta åren studsade Tracy mellan olika delar i kortvariga Broadway-spel och ledande roller i regionala aktiebolag och slutligen uppnådde stjärna när han kastades som dödsrörelse Killer Mears 1930 Broadway hit The Last Mile. Därefter dök han upp i två Vitaphone-korta ämnen,men han var missnöjd med sig själv och pessimistisk om sina chanser för skärmstardom.
Nevertheless, director John Ford hired Tracy to star in the 1930 feature film Up the River, which resulted in a five-year stay at Fox Studios in Hollywood. Although few of his Fox films were memorable—excepting perhaps Me and My Gal (1932), 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), and The Power and the Glory (1933)—his tenure at the studio enabled him to develop his uncanny ability to act without ever appearing to be acting. His friend Humphrey Bogart once attempted to describe the elusive Tracy technique: “[You] don’t see the mechanism working, the wheels turning. He covers up. He never overacts or is hammy. He makes you believe what he is playing.” For his part, Tracy always denied that he had come up with any sort of magic formula. Whenever he was asked the secret of great acting, he usually snapped, “Learn your lines!”
In 1935 he was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he would do some of his best work, beginning with his harrowing performance as a lynch-mob survivor in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936). He received his first of nine Oscar nominations for San Francisco (1936) and became the first actor to win two consecutive Academy Awards, for his performance as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel in Captains Courageous (1937) and for his role as the priest who founded the eponymous facility in Boys Town (1938). In the course of his two decades at MGM he settled gracefully into character leads, conveying everything from paternal bemusement in Father of the Bride (1950) to grim determination in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). In later years his health was eroded by respiratory ailments and a lifelong struggle with alcoholism, but Tracy worked into the early 1960s, delivering exceptionally powerful performances in producer-director Stanley Kramer’s Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
Married since 1923 to former actress Louise Treadwell, Tracy lived apart from his wife throughout most of their marriage, though as a strict Roman Catholic he refused to consider divorce. From 1942 onward, he maintained a warm, intimate relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Tracy and Hepburn were also memorably teamed in nine films, including Woman of the Year (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Desk Set (1957), and Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), which was completed three weeks before Tracy’s death.
