Lee Remick Career Summary
Occupational Inheritance: Yes., mother actress
Quincy, MA
Nationality: US
Social Class Middle
Race/Ethnicity/Religion
Family:
Education: Swoboda School of Dance; The Hewitt School
Training:
Teacher/Inspirational Figure:
Radio Debut:
TV Debut:
Stage Debut:
Broadway Debut:Broadway theatre debut, age 18
Film Debut: Face in Crowd, 1957; 22
Breakthrough Role: Anatomy of Murder, 1959; 24
Oscar Role: Days of Wine and Roses, 1962; 27
Other Noms:
Other Awards: Tony Nom, 7 Emmy Noms
Frequent Collaborator: Kazan (2); Blake Edwards (2)
Screen Image: lead
Last Film:
Career Output: 29 films in 31 years
Film Career Span: 1957-1988; 31 years
Marriage: 2 (producers)
Politics:
Death: 1991; age 55
Lee Ann Remick (December 14, 1935 – July 2, 1991) was an American actress nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for the film Days of Wine and Roses (1962),
She also was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in Wait Until Dark (1966) in addition to earning 7 Emmy Award nominations.
Remick made her film debut in A Face in the Crowd (1957).
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).
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 local family and practiced baton twirling so that she would be believable as the teenager who wins the attention of Lonesome Rhodes (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 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 TV version of The Tempest with Richard Burton.
Rehearsing Something’s Got to Give with director George Cukor in 1962.
Remick was top-billed in Sanctuary (1961) alongside Yves Montand.
She appeared in The Farmer’s Daughter (1962) on TV.
She starred opposite Glenn Ford in the Blake Edwards suspense-thriller Experiment in Terror (1962).
The same year, she was nominated for Best Actress Oscar 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 during the filming of the comedy Something’s Got to Give, the studio announced Remick as her replacement. Co-star Dean Martin refused to continue, however, saying that while he admired Remick, he had signed on to the picture strictly to work with Monroe.
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 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 it 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, which 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 TV 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; 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); Touch Me Not, a.k.a. The Hunted (1974); Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1975), playing the title role, which 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.
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.
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. However, her condition eventually worsened and she died on July 2, 1991, at the age of 55.
Remick was the subject of “Lee Remick,” the 1978 debut single by the Australian indie rock band The Go-Betweens. Songwriter Robert Forster mistakenly thought Remick was from Ireland, and he makes references to this idea in the song. In reality, Remick was American-born and raised (as were her parents);
After 1970, she divided her time between England (where she had family ancestry) and the U.S.
The English indie rock band Hefner recorded a song titled “Lee Remick” in 1998, unrelated to the Go-Betweens’ single.
Filmograph
1957 A Face in the Crowd Betty Lou Fleckum Film debut
1958 The Long, Hot Summer Eula Varner
1959 These Thousand Hills Callie
1959 Anatomy of a Murder Laura Manion
1960 Wild River Carol Garth Baldwin
1961 Sanctuary Temple Drake
1962 Experiment in Terror Kelly Sherwood
1962 Days of Wine and Roses Kirsten Arnesen Clay
1963 The Running Man Stella Black
1963 The Wheeler Dealers Molly Thatcher
1965 Baby the Rain Must Fall Georgette Thomas
1965 The Hallelujah Trail Cora Templeton Massingale
1965 The Satan Bug Cocktail Waitress Uncredited
1968 No Way to Treat a Lady Kate Palmer
1968 The Detective Karen Leland
1969 Hard Contract Sheila Metcalfe
1970 Loot Nurse Fay McMahon
1970 A Severed Head Antonia Lynch-Gibbon
1971 Sometimes a Great Notion Viv Stamper
1973 A Delicate Balance Julia
1974 Touch Me Not Elanor
1975 Hennessy Kate Brooke
1976 The Omen Katherine Thorn
1977 Telefon Barbara
1978 The Medusa Touch Doctor Zonfeld
1979 The Europeans Baroness Eugenia Young Munster
1980 The Competition Greta Vandemann
1980 Tribute Maggie Stratton
1988 Emma’s War Anne Grange
2024 The First Omen Katherine Thorn Archival footage
Television
1954 Studio One Jessie Benson Episode: “The Death and Life of Larry Benson”
1956 Studio One Elaine Baylee Episode: “The Landlady’s Daughter”
1960 The Tempest Miranda TV movie
1962 The Farmer’s Daughter Katrin Holstrom TV movie
1967 Damn Yankees! Lola TV movie
1972 The Man Who Came to Dinner Maggie Cutler TV movie
1972 BBC Play of the Month Alma Winemiller Episode: “Summer and Smoke”
1973 And No One Could Save Her Fern O’Neil TV movie
1973 The Blue Knight Cassie Walters TV movie
1974 QB VII Lady Margaret 2 episodes
1974 Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill Lady Randolph Churchill 7 episodes
1975 Hustling Fran Morrison TV movie
1975 A Girl Named Sooner Elizabeth McHenry TV movie
1977 The Ambassadors Maria Gostrey TV movie
1978 Breaking Up Joann Hammil TV movie
1978 Wheels Erica Trenton TV movie
1979 Torn Between Two Lovers Diana Conti TV movie
1979 Ike: The War Years Kay Summersby 3 episodes
1980 Haywire Margaret Sullavan TV movie
1980 The Women’s Room Mira Adams TV movie
1982 I Do! I Do! She TV movie
1982 The Letter Leslie Crosbie TV movie
1983 The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story Janet Broderick TV movie
1984 Mistral’s Daughter Kate Browning TV miniseries
1984 A Good Sport Michelle Tenney TV movie
1984 Rearview Mirror Terry Seton TV movie
1985 Toughlove Jan Charters TV movie
1985 Faerie Tale Theatre The Snow Queen Episode: “The Snow Queen”
1986 American Playhouse Eleanor Roosevelt Episode: “Eleanor: In Her Words”
1986 Of Pure Blood Alicia Browning TV movie
1987 Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder Frances Schreuder TV movie
1988 Jesse Jesse Maloney TV movie
1988 The Vision Grace Gardner TV movie
1989 Bridge to Silence Marge Duffield TV movie
1989 Around the World in 80 Days Sarah Bernhardt 3 episodes
1989 Dark Holiday Gene LePere TV movie a.k.a. Passport to Terror
Awards and nominations
1963 Best Actress Nominee, Days of Wine and Roses
1963 San Sebastián Film Festival Silver Shell for Best Actress Won
1964 British Academy Awards, Nominee, Best Actress in a Leading Role
1966 Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Play Wait Until Dark
1974 Primetime Emmy Awards, Nomimee, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series
1975 British Academy Television Awards Best Actress Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill Won
1975 Primetime Emmy Awards, nominee, Outstanding Single Performance By Supporting Actress In A Comedy Or Drama Series QB VII
1976 Primetime Emmy Awards, Nominee, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
1978 Wheels Nominated
1980 Primetime Emmy Awards, Nominee, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Haywire
1987 Primetime Emmy Awards Nominee, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder
Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming – Performing Eleanor: In Her Own Words Nominated
1990 Women in Film Honors Crystal Award —N/a Honored
1991 Hollywood Walk of Fame Star – Motion Pictures —N/a Honored
