Lee Remick


Lee Ann Remick was an American actress. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses, and for the 1966 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her Broadway theatre performance in Wait Until Dark.
Remick made her film debut in 1957 in A Face in the Crowd. Her other notable film roles include Anatomy of a Murder, Wild River, The Detective, The Omen, and The Europeans. She won Golden Globe Awards for the 1973 TV film The Blue Knight, and for playing the title role in the 1974 miniseries . For the latter role, she also won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. In April 1991, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Gertrude Margaret , an actress, and Francis Edwin "Frank" Remick, who owned a department store. She had one older brother, Bruce. One of her maternal great-grandmothers, Eliza Duffield, was a preacher born in England.
Remick attended the Swaboda School of Dance, the Hewitt School, and studied acting at Barnard College and the Actors Studio.

Career

Broadway and television

Remick made her Broadway theatre debut in 1953 with Be Your Age. She began guest starring on episodes of TV anthology series such as Armstrong Circle Theatre, Studio One in Hollywood, Robert Montgomery Presents, Kraft Theatre and Playhouse 90.

Early films

Remick made her film debut in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd. While filming the movie in Arkansas, Remick lived with a local family and practiced baton twirling so that she would be believable as the teenager who wins the attention of Lonesome Rhodes.
After appearing as Eula Varner, the hot-blooded daughter-in-law of Will Varner in 1958's The Long, Hot Summer, she appeared in These Thousand Hills as a dance hall girl, both for 20th Century Fox.

Film stardom

Remick came to prominence as a rape victim whose husband is tried for killing her attacker in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder.
In 1960, she made a second film with Kazan, Wild River, which co-starred Montgomery Clift and Jo Van Fleet. That year she played Miranda in a TV version of The Tempest with Richard Burton.
Remick was top billed in Sanctuary alongside Yves Montand. She did The Farmer's Daughter on television.
in 1962
In 1962 she starred opposite Glenn Ford in the Blake Edwards suspense-thriller Experiment in Terror.
That same year she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, also directed by Edwards. Bette Davis, also nominated that year for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, said, "Miss Remick's performance astonished me, and I thought, if I lose the Oscar, it will be to her." They both lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker.
When Marilyn Monroe was fired during the filming of the comedy Something's Got to Give, the studio announced that Remick would be her replacement. Co-star Dean Martin refused to continue, however, saying that while he admired Remick, he had signed onto the picture strictly to be able to work with Monroe.
She did a thriller, The Running Man and a comedy with James Garner, The Wheeler Dealers.

Return to Broadway

Remick next appeared in the 1964 Broadway musical Anyone Can Whistle, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book and direction by Arthur Laurents, which ran for only a week. Remick's performance is captured on the original cast recording. This began a lifelong friendship between Remick and Sondheim, and she later appeared in the landmark 1985 concert version of his musical Follies.
Remick returned to films with Baby the Rain Must Fall, with Steve McQueen from a script by Horton Foote, and The Hallelujah Trail with Burt Lancaster.
In 1966, she starred in the Broadway play Wait Until Dark under the direction of Arthur Penn and co-starring Robert Duvall. It was a big success and ran for 373 performances; Remick was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actress. It was adapted into a successful film the following year starring Audrey Hepburn.

More films

She performed in Damn Yankees! for TV and starred in No Way to Treat a Lady with Rod Steiger and George Segal, The Detective with Frank Sinatra, and Hard Contract with James Coburn.
Remick went to England to make Loot and A Severed Head. Back in the US she was in Paul Newman's Sometimes a Great Notion.

TV movies

Remick starred in many TV movies beginning with The Man Who Came to Dinner with Orson Welles. She followed it with Summer and Smoke for British TV; And No One Could Save Her ; Of Men and Women, an unsuccessful pilot; The Blue Knight with William Holden; A Delicate Balance with Katharine Hepburn; QB VII ; Touch Me Not ; ', playing the title role, which earned her an Emmy nomination; Hustling with Jill Clayburgh; A Girl Named Sooner ; and Hennessy with Rod Steiger.
She co-starred with Gregory Peck in the 1976 horror film The Omen, in which her character's adopted son, Damien, is revealed to be the Antichrist. The film was both a critical and commercial success and was regarded as one of the best horror films ever made.
She followed it up with leading actress roles in Telefon, with Charles Bronson; Breaking Up for US TV; The Medusa Touch with Richard Burton; Wheels with Rock Hudson;Torn Between Two Lovers ; ' with Duvall, playing Kay Summersby; and The Europeans for James Ivory.

1980s

Remick played Margaret Sullavan in Haywire. She had the lead in The Women's Room, and supported in The Competition and Tribute, the latter with Lemmon.
Remick starred in The Letter, ' and a TV adaptation of I Do! I Do!.
She is also remembered for Mistral's Daughter. The reviewer of The New York Times praised Remick for portraying Kate "to fresh-faced clawing perfection".
Remick was in Rearview Mirror, Toughlove, Of Pure Blood, and '. She went to Australia to make Emma's War.
Remick's final performances include The Vision with Dirk Bogarde, Jesse, Bridge to Silence and playing Sarah Bernhardt in Around the World in 80 Days. Her last performance was the lead in a TV movie Dark Holiday.

Recognition

Remick was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award in 1990.
She has a star in the Motion Pictures section on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard. It was dedicated April 29, 1991.

Personal life

Remick married producer Bill Colleran, whose credits include Your Hit Parade, The Dean Martin Show and The Judy Garland Show, on August 3, 1957. They had two children, Katherine Lee Colleran and Matthew Remick Colleran. Remick and Colleran divorced in 1968.
Remick married British producer William Rory "Kip" Gowans on December 18, 1970. He was an assistant director on such films as Darling, Far from the Madding Crowd and The Lion in Winter before they married, and afterwards worked on Sleuth, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Human Factor. She moved with Gowans to England and remained married to him until her death. She starred in four telefilms he produced, The Women's Room, The Letter, Rearview Mirror and Of Pure Blood. Remick and Gowans spent time in both England and Osterville, Massachusetts, which she considered her "true home".
Through her daughter, Remick had two grandchildren.
Remick died of kidney cancer on July 2, 1991, at the age of 55, at her Brentwood home in Los Angeles.

Popular culture

Remick was the subject of "Lee Remick", the 1978 debut single by the Australian indie rock band The Go-Betweens. The British indie rock band Hefner recorded a song titled "Lee Remick" in 1998, unrelated to the Go-Betweens' single.

Filmography

Film

YearTitleRoleNotes
1957A Face in the CrowdBetty Lou FleckumFilm debut
1958The Long, Hot SummerEula Varner
1959These Thousand HillsCallie
1959Anatomy of a MurderLaura ManionNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
1960Wild RiverCarol Garth Baldwin
1961SanctuaryTemple Drake
1962Experiment in TerrorKelly Sherwood
1962Days of Wine and RosesKirsten Arnesen ClayNominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
Nominated—BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress
Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
1963The Running ManStella
1963The Wheeler DealersMolly Thatcher
1965Baby the Rain Must FallGeorgette Thomas
1965The Hallelujah TrailCora Templeton Massingale
1968No Way to Treat a LadyKate Palmer
1968The DetectiveKaren
1969Hard ContractSheila Metcalfe
1970LootNurse Fay McMahon
1970A Severed HeadAntonia Lynch-Gibbon
1971Sometimes a Great NotionViv Stamper
1973A Delicate BalanceJulia
1974Touch Me NotElanor
1975HennessyKate Brooke
1976The OmenKatherine Thorn
1977TelefonBarbara
1978The Medusa TouchDoctor Zonfeld
1979The EuropeansEugenia Young
1980The CompetitionGreta Vandemann
1980TributeMaggie Stratton
1988Emma's WarAnne GrangeFinal film

Television