Lee Remick

Some of her other notable film roles include Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Wild River (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), The Detective (1968), The Omen (1976), and The Europeans (1979). Remick won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for the TV film The Blue Knight (1973), and for playing the title role in the miniseries Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974). For the latter role, she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. In April 1991, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Gertrude Margaret (two sources say Patricia) (née Waldo), 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 Swoboda School of Dance and the Hewitt School.

Remick made her Broadway theatre debut, age 18, in the 1953 production 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 Television Theatre, and Playhouse 90.

Remick made her film debut in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). 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 (played by Andy Griffith). After appearing as Eula Varner, the hot-blooded daughter-in-law of Will Varner (Orson Welles) in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), she appeared in These Thousand Hills (1959) as a dance-hall girl, both for 20th Century Fox.

Remick played Margaret Sullavan in Haywire (1980) and earned an Emmy nomination (as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Special). She had the lead in The Women's Room (1980) and supporting roles in The Competition (1980) and Tribute (1980), the latter with Lemmon. Remick starred in The Letter (1982), The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story (1983), and a TV adaptation of I Do! I Do! (1984). She had a role in the miniseries Mistral's Daughter (1984), adapted from the novel by Judith Krantz. The reviewer from The New York Times praised Remick for portraying Kate "to fresh-faced, clawing perfection". Remick was in Rearview Mirror (1984), Toughlove (1985), Of Pure Blood (1986), and Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder (1987), earning another Emmy nomination (as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special). She went to Australia to make Emma's War (1987). Remick's later performances include The Vision (1987) with Dirk Bogarde, Jesse (1988), Bridge to Silence (1989), and playing Sarah Bernhardt in Around the World in 80 Days (1989). Her last performance was the lead in the TV movie Dark Holiday (1989).

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 (b. January 27, 1959) and Matthew Remick Colleran (b. June 7, 1961). Remick and Colleran divorced in 1968. Remick married British producer William Rory "Kip" Gowans on December 18, 1970. He was an assistant director on films such as Darling (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and The Lion in Winter (1968) before they married, and afterward worked on Sleuth (1972), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and The Human Factor (1979). 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 (1980), The Letter (1982), Rearview Mirror (1984) and Of Pure Blood (1986). Remick and Gowans spent time in both England and Osterville, Massachusetts, which she considered her "true home".

In the spring of 1989, Remick was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Treatments at first seemed to be successful. Her condition eventually worsened, though, and she died on July 2, 1991, at the age of 55.

Remick came to prominence portraying a rape victim whose husband is tried for killing her attacker in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959). She made a second film with Kazan, Wild River (1960), which co-starred Montgomery Clift and Jo Van Fleet. That year she played Miranda in a television version of The Tempest with Richard Burton. Remick was top-billed in Sanctuary (1961) alongside Yves Montand. She appeared in The Farmer's Daughter (1962) on television. She starred opposite Glenn Ford in the Blake Edwards suspense-thriller Experiment in Terror (1962). The 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 (1962), 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 for absenteeism 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. Remick did The Running Man (1963) with Laurence Harvey and The Wheeler Dealers (1963) with James Garner.

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 one week. Remick's performance is captured on the original cast recording. This began a friendship between Remick and Sondheim, and she later appeared in the 1985 concert version of his musical Follies. Remick returned to films with Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), with Steve McQueen from a script by Horton Foote, and The Hallelujah Trail (1965) 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 (Dramatic). It was adapted into a successful film the following year starring Audrey Hepburn.

She performed in Damn Yankees! (1967) for TV and starred in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) with Rod Steiger and George Segal, The Detective (1968) with Frank Sinatra, and Hard Contract (1969) with James Coburn. Remick went to the UK to make Loot (1970) and A Severed Head (1971). Back in the U.S., she was in Sometimes a Great Notion (1971). She appeared in Hennessy (1975), with Rod Steiger. She co-starred with Gregory Peck in the 1976 horror film The Omen. The film was a commercial success. Remick followed it up with leading actress roles in Telefon (1977), with Charles Bronson; The Medusa Touch (1978) with Richard Burton; the television miniseries Wheels (1979) with Rock Hudson; Ike: The War Years (1979) portraying Kay Summersby; and The Europeans (1979) for director James Ivory. Remick starred in many TV movies, beginning with The Man Who Came to Dinner (1972) with Orson Welles. She followed it with Summer and Smoke (1972) for British TV, The Hunted a.k.a. Touch Me Not (1972), And No One Could Save Her (1973), Of Men and Women (1973) – an unsuccessful pilot, The Blue Knight (1973) with William Holden, A Delicate Balance (1973) with Katharine Hepburn, QB VII (1974), Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1975) playing the title role that earned her an Emmy nomination, Hustling (1975) with Jill Clayburgh, A Girl Named Sooner (1975), Breaking Up (1978), and Torn Between Two Lovers (1979) with George Peppard.