Janet Leigh was an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. She was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped her secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She achieved her most lasting recognition as the doomed Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. She died of cancer in October 2004 at age 77, following a year-long battle with vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels.
About Janet Leigh in brief
Janet Leigh was an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. She was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped her secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leigh played mostly dramatic roles during the latter half of the 1950s, in such films as Safari and Orson Welles’s film noir Touch of Evil. She achieved her most lasting recognition as the doomed Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her highly publicized marriage to actor Tony Curtis ended in divorce in 1962, and after starring in The Manchurian Candidate that same year, Leigh scaled back her career. In late 1975, she made her Broadway debut in a production of Murder Among Friends. In addition to her work as an actress, Leigh also wrote four books between 1984 and 2002, two of which were novels. She died in October 2004 at age 77, following a year-long battle with vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. She is survived by her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, who was married to Tony Curtis for more than 30 years. She also had a son, James Curtis, with whom she had a daughter, Jamie Lee, and a son-in-law, James Lee Curtis with her ex-husband Tony Curtis. She had a grandson, James James Curtis III, who is currently married to actor Robert De Niro. Her great-granddaughter is actress Emma Watson, who starred in the film adaptation of The Godfather: Part II, which she co-wrote and co-starred in with Robert DeNiro.
Leigh had a great deal of success as a dancer, appearing in numerous nightclubs and nightclubs. She appeared in several films for MGM which spanned a wide variety of genres, including Act of Violence, Little Women, Angels in the Outfield, Scaramouche, The Naked Spur, and Living It Up. She also appeared in two horror films with her daughter, The Fog: The Fog and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. Leigh was a guest star on the radio anthology The Cresta Blanca Players at the age of 19, and later appeared in a number of television shows, including The Tonight Show and The Muny. She wrote four novels, including two about her experiences as a working-class girl in Stockton, California, and one about her time as a college student in the 1940s and 1950s. Her last novel, The Second Half, was published in 2002, and she also wrote two books about her life in the 1960s and 1970s, including a novel about the life of her late husband, Tony Curtis, as well as a memoir about her relationship with her late father, John Curtis. Leigh died of cancer in 2004, aged 77, at her home in Los Angeles, California. She leaves behind a husband, two children, a son and a daughter-in law, and two step-children.
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This page is based on the article Janet Leigh published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
