Lee Remick

Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy Southern majorette in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957). Her next role was also southern: Eula Varner in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). She emerged as a real star in the role of an apparent rape victim in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). And she won an Academy Award nomination for her role as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (1962). After more work in TV and movies, she moved to England in 1970, making more movies there. In 1988 she formed a production company with partners James Garner and Peter K. Duchow.

Movies

Loot

Based on the play by Joe Orton, this film follows the adventures of two pals who have pulled off a bank robbery and have to hide the loot. Fortunately one of them works in a funeral parlor and they have a coffin to spare. Then there’s the gold-digger nurse and…

More about this movie

Fun Facts

Was the daughter of actress Gertrude Margaret Waldo and department store owner Frank Remick.

Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award (1990).

Her son, Matt Colleran, was a founding member of Los Angeles-based rock band, 'Marys Danish. He wrote (with Gretchen Seager) the band's biggest hit, "Don't Crash the Car Tonight"".

Her role in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) was intended for Lana Turner

Quotes

I make movies for grownups. When Hollywood starts making them again, I'll start acting in them again.

Many times as an actress I feel crazy, yet the truth is that I would feel far more crazy if I were not an actress.

Breasts and bottoms look boringly alike.

[on Laurence Harvey] The tales I can tell of working with him (in [The Running Man (1963)]) are too horrendous to repeat.

I find it terribly depressing that 54 million people watch The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) - just about the same number who didn't take the trouble to vote in the Presidential election.

[on Wild River (1960)] It's the kind of movie I love, a major subject done in a personal way...it was the best work I had done and I think it stands up well today.

[on Montgomery Clift] He did inspire in me, as he did in most women I suppose, the feeling of wanting to look after him. He was like a wounded bird -- so vulnerable.

My interpretation of the role in Wild River (1960) was the truest in my experience, and it was Kazan [director Elia Kazan] who enabled me to make it true.

[on Jack Lemmon] He has extraordinary instinct. He's almost infallible.

I do like to have control. I like to have my say about who directs things or who's going to be in them.

This is a strange business. You can train for something that never happens, or you can get discovered and turned into a star because you happen to be in the right spot at the right moment. That's really no way to prepare for anything. Certainly you cannot plan or map out a career.

I don't quite know what stardom means. It was never something I went after, as such. I love to work; I always have, and I love trying to do the best. I suppose it means power basically -- and I'm not good at that. On a sense, he (Kazan) was right. And claws, I don't have.

She says she did The Hallelujah Trail (1965) "because my agent said I needed to be in a big picture"".

I'm really a housewife who is incidentally an actress."