Lee Remick

Lee Remick was an American actress born on December 14, 1935, in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret Waldo, an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, who owned a department store. She had one older brother, Bruce. Remick attended the Swoboda School of Dance and The Hewitt School before launching a career that spanned Broadway, film, and television across four decades. She died on July 2, 1991.

Remick made her Broadway debut at age 18 in the 1953 production Be Your Age. Her next stage appearance came in 1964 with the musical Anyone Can Whistle, which featured music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book and direction by Arthur Laurents. The production ran for only one week, though Remick's performance was preserved on the original cast recording. The show marked the beginning of a lasting friendship between Remick and Sondheim, and she later appeared in the 1985 concert version of his musical Follies. In 1966, she starred in the Broadway play Wait Until Dark, directed by Arthur Penn and co-starring Robert Duvall. The production ran for 373 performances and earned Remick a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play.

Her film career began with Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd in 1957. While shooting in Arkansas, Remick lived with a local family and learned baton twirling to convincingly portray a teenager who captures the attention of the character Lonesome Rhodes. She subsequently appeared in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and These Thousand Hills (1959) before gaining wider recognition in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), in which she played a rape victim whose husband stands trial for killing her attacker. In 1962, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of an alcoholic wife opposite Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, directed by Blake Edwards. That same year she starred opposite Glenn Ford in Edwards's Experiment in Terror. When Marilyn Monroe was dismissed from the production of Something's Got to Give, the studio announced Remick as her replacement, though co-star Dean Martin declined to continue without Monroe.

Remick's television work was equally extensive. She earned seven Emmy Award nominations over the course of her career. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for the television film The Blue Knight (1973), in which she appeared alongside William Holden. The following year she played the title role in the miniseries Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, a performance that brought her both an Emmy nomination and the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. Among her many other television films were A Delicate Balance (1973) with Katharine Hepburn, QB VII (1974), Haywire (1980), in which she portrayed Margaret Sullavan, and Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder (1987), the latter earning her an additional Emmy nomination.

On the big screen, Remick co-starred with Gregory Peck in the commercially successful 1976 horror film The Omen and appeared in The Europeans (1979) for director James Ivory. She also appeared in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) with Rod Steiger and George Segal, and The Detective (1968) with Frank Sinatra.

Remick married television producer Bill Colleran on August 3, 1957. The couple had two children, Katherine Lee Colleran, born January 27, 1959, and Matthew Remick Colleran, born June 7, 1961, before divorcing in 1968. On December 18, 1970, she married British producer William Rory Gowans, known as Kip, and relocated to England, remaining married to him until her death. Gowans produced four of her television films: The Women's Room (1980), The Letter (1982), Rearview Mirror (1984), and Of Pure Blood (1986). In April 1991, Remick received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.