Susan Sarandon has long known she had Italian roots since her mother's maiden name was Lenora Marie Criscione. But it was her participation on the hit TV ancestry show "Who Do You Think You Are?" to trace her Italian Ancestry back more than 10 generations to the mid 17th century in Tuscany, BUT she is also of Sicilian Ancestry. I want to know about that. 

Susan Sarandon Brief Bio.
Susan Sarandon (born October 4, 1946) the eldest of nine children in a Roman Catholic family, was born as Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York City, the daughter of Lenora Marie (father was of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry and her mother was of Italian descent, her maternal ancestors emigrating from the regions of Tuscany and Sicily (Criscione) and Phillip Leslie Tomalin, who worked as a television producer. 

In 2006, Sarandon traveled to Wales to trace her family's Welsh genealogy. Their journey was documented by the BBC Wales program, Coming Home: Susan Sarandon. 
Sarandon grew up in Edison, New Jersey, and married her college sweetheart, another actor Chris Sarandon in 1967,  and retained his name after their divorce in 1979, 
Sarandon appeared in Lady Liberty  (1971) by Mario Monicelli opposite Sophia Loren. Five years later, she appeared in the cult favorite The Rocky Horror Picture Show  (1975). That same year, she played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper  opposite Robert Redford. In 1978, Sarandon played the mother of a child prostitute, played by Brooke Shields, in Pretty Baby  Her most controversial film appearance was in The Hunger  in 1983, a modern vampire Catherine Deneuve, Sarandon played one of the leads in the 1987 dark comedy/fantasy film story co-starring The Witches of Eastwick opposite Jack Nicholson. She did not become a "household name" until her breakthrough in the 1988 film Bull Durham  which became a huge commercial and critical success. Sarandon received five Academy Award nominations for best actress, in Atlantic City  (1980), Thelma & Louise (1991), Lorenzo's  Oil (1992), and The Client  (1994). In 1995 she won the award for her performance in Dead Man Walking
Additional performances in film include Stepmom (1998), Anywhere but Here  (1999), Cradle Will Rock  (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Shall We Dance  (2004), Alfie  (2004), Romance & Cigarettes  (2005), Elizabethtown  (2005) and Enchanted  (2007).
Sarandon has contributed the narration to some two dozen documentary films, many dealing with social and political issues; in addition, she has served as the presenter on many installments of the PBS documentary series, Independent Lens   In 2007 she hosted and presented Mythos, a series of lectures by the late American mythology professor Joseph Campbell
Sarandon joined the cast of the adaptation of The Lovely Bones  opposite Rachel Weisz, and appeared with her daughter, Eva Amurri, in Middle of Nowhere; both of the movies were filmed in 2007
Most recently, Sarandon joined the cast of Peacock, starring opposite Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Bill Pullman and Josh Lucas. 

SARANDON DISCOVERS ITALIAN ROOTS
(ANSA) - Los Angeles, April 26 - Oscar-winning US actress Susan Sarandon has discovered her Italian roots. 
Her great-grandfather came from a small town near Lucca in Tuscany called Coreglia, she found out. 
The "Dead Man Walking" and "Thelma and Louise" star went on hit TV ancestry show "Who Do You Think You Are?" to trace a grandmother called Anita Rigali who dropped off the family tree in the 1930s. 
Rigali, she found out, was a showgirl and dancer in New York before WWII. 
Rigali's father, Sarandon's great-grandfather, was a statue-maker called Mansueto who, the show's genealogists said, came to America because life was tough for sculptors in Tuscany. 
In Coreglia, Sarandon visited a church where ten generations of the Rigali family were baptised, dating back to the mid-17th century. 
"I'm always happy to be in Italy," she said.     "The first time I came I felt inexplicably at home". 
"Now I know why. My gene pool was crying out". 

Sarandon, has a 25-year-old actress daughter, Eva Amurri, with Italian filmmaker Franco Amurri, whom she dated in the 1980s.
 

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