Lee Remick

Biography

Lee Ann Remick (Quincy, Massachusetts, 1935 - Los Angeles, 1991) was an American actress who worked across film, stage and television. Her career began in the late 1950s, and she became one of the most recognised performers of psychological drama and suspense cinema of her era, while keeping a long presence on the small screen.

The daughter of an actress and a department store owner, she grew up in New York, where she trained at Barnard College and the Actor's Studio. She made her Broadway debut in 1953 at the age of eighteen, in Be Your Age, and then guest-starred on many television anthology series. Her first film role came in 1957 with A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan. The Long, Hot Summer (1958) raised her profile, and in 1959 she became a star with Anatomy of a Murder, directed by Otto Preminger and co-starring James Stewart. She worked with Kazan again on Wild River (1960), and in 1962 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Days of Wine and Roses, directed by Blake Edwards, playing the wife of a man driven into alcoholism opposite Jack Lemmon.

In the mid-1960s she triumphed on Broadway in Wait Until Dark, directed by Arthur Penn, a role that earned her a Tony nomination. In 1970 she moved to England, where she made several films. Back in the United States she regained wide attention with The Omen (1976), opposite Gregory Peck, and went on to Telefon (1977) with Charles Bronson and The Europeans (1979) for James Ivory. More than half of her films were made for television, and there she won a Golden Globe for The Blue Knight and a BAFTA TV Award for the miniseries Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, in addition to several Emmy nominations.

In 1988 she formed a production company with two partners, one of whom was actor James Garner. She was first married to producer Bill Colleran, with whom she had two children, and later to British producer Kip Gowans, to whom she stayed married until her death. She was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1989 and died in Los Angeles in 1991, at the age of 55. Her legacy rests mainly on a handful of films from the 1950s and 1960s and on her television work, a medium in which she was especially admired. In April 1991 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her name also travelled beyond the cinema: the Australian band The Go-Betweens titled their 1978 debut single after her.

Key films

• A Face in the Crowd (1957)
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
• Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
• The Omen (1976)
• The Long, Hot Summer (1958)