People

Lee Grant

Acting · follow into films and chains

Biography

Lee Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal; October 31, 1925) is an American actress and director. She made her film debut in 1951 as a young shoplifter in William Wyler's Detective Story, co-starring Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker. This role earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as the Best Actress Award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. In 1952 she was blacklisted from most acting jobs for the next 12 years. She was able to find only occasional work onstage or as a teacher during this period. It also contributed to her divorce. She was removed from the blacklist in 1962 and rebuilt her acting career. She starred in 71 TV episodes of Peyton Place (1965–1966), followed by lead roles in films such as Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night (both 1967), and Shampoo (1975), for the last of which she won an Oscar. In 1964, she won the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her performance in The Maids. During her career she was nominated for the Emmy Award seven times between 1966 and 1993, winning twice. In 1986 she directed Down and Out in America which tied for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and in the same year she also won a Directors Guild of America Award for Nobody's Child.

Notable films

Where to start

Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.

Mulholland Drive

Appears in a KinoChain journey

The Swarm

Appears in a KinoChain journey

Airport '77

As Karen Wallace

Damien - Omen II

As Ann Thorn

In the Heat of the Night

As Mrs. Leslie Colbert

Dr. T & the Women

As Dr. Harper

Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster

As Self

The Big Town

As Ferguson Edwards

Chains

KinoChain journeys

Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.

Browse all chains

When Nature Turns

Exploring the deep to the desert, and the skies to the suburbs, animals have long been cinema's most primal villains. This chain traces the evolution of the cre...

8 films

20 Home Video Releases Every Film Obsessive Should Own

There was a brief, glorious period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when buying a film on home video felt less like acquiring a product and more like being han...

20 films

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