Lee Grant 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. In 1952 she was blacklisted from most acting jobs for the next 12 years. She starred in 71 TV episodes of Peyton Place, followed by lead roles in films such as Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night, and Shampoo. In 1986 she directed Down and Out in America which tied for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
About Lee Grant in brief
Lee Grant 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. In 1952 she was blacklisted from most acting jobs for the next 12 years. She starred in 71 TV episodes of Peyton Place, followed by lead roles in films such as Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night, and Shampoo. 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. Her date of birth is October 31, but the year is disputed, with all years ranging from 1925 to 1931 having been given as her year of birth at some point. Grant’s stated ages at the time of her professional debut and Oscar nomination indicate she was born in 1927. She debuted in L’Oracolo at the Metropolitan Opera in 1931 and later joined the American Ballet as an adolescent. She attended Art Students League of New York, Juilliard School of Music, The High School of music & Art, and George Washington High School, all in New York City.
In 1959 she succeeded Anne Bancroft in the lead role in the Seawawes production of Two Two Two. In the early 1960s she remarried and played Rose Peabody in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow In the Broadway production of Search For Tomorrow. She was removed from the blacklist in 1962 and rebuilt her acting career. Grant established herself as a dramatic method actress on and off Broadway, earning praise for her role as a shoplift in Detective Story in 1949. She received her first Academy Award nomination, and winning the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1951, she gave an impassioned eulogy at the memorial service for actor J. Edward Bromberg, whose early death, she implied, was caused by the stress of being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Her name later appeared in the publication Red Channels, and as a result, her work in television and movies was limited. She said she enjoyed working under directorWilliam Wyler, who helped guide her. Kirk Douglas, who acted with her inDetective Story, recalled that director Edward Dmytryk, a blacklistee, had first named her husband at the HUAC: Lee was only a kid, a beautiful young girl with extraordinary talent and a big future.
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