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Pam Grier
Born	Pamela Suzette Grier May 26, 1949 (1949-05-26) (age 60) Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1970–present

Pamela Suzette "Pam" Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress. She came to fame in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison films and blaxploitation films such as 1974's Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown. She is one of a few African American actresses to have received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for a SAG as well as a Satellite Award for her performance in the iconic film Jackie Brown. She received an Emmy Award nomination for her work in an Animated Program Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Ever Child. Rotten Tomatoes has ranked her as the second Greatest Female Heroine in film history.¹

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Awards/nominations 3 Filmography 4 Discography 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Early life

Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S., the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier, who worked as a mechanic and Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force. She has one sister and one brother, and is a cousin of football player Rosey Grier.² Because of her father's military career, her family moved frequently during her childhood, to various places such as England, and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended East High School. While there she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College.

Career

Grier moved to Los Angeles, California in 1967, where she was initially hired as a receptionist at the American International Pictures (AIP) company. She was discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast her in his women in prison films The Big Doll House (1971), and The Big Bird Cage (1972). While under contract at AIP, she became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, playing big, bold, assertive roles, beginning with Jack Hill's Coffy (1973), in which she plays a nurse who seeks revenge on drug dealers; her character was advertised in the trailer as the "baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town!" The film, which was filled with sexual and violent elements typical of the genre, was a box office hit, and Grier was noted as the first African-American female to headline a film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were all male. In his review of Coffy, film critic Roger Ebert noted that Grier was an actress of "beautiful face and astonishing form" and that she possessed a kind of "physical life" missing from other actresses.³ Grier subsequently played similar characters in the AIP films Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster, and Sheba, Baby (both 1975).

With the demise of blaxploitation, Grier's career went on hiatus for many years. She acquired progressively larger character roles in the 1980s, including a prostitute in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), a witch in Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983), and Steven Seagal's detective partner in Above the Law (1988). She made guest appearances on Miami Vice, Martin, Night Court and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and also had a recurring role in the TV series Crime Story between 1986 and 1988.

In the late 1990s Grier was a cast member of the Showtime series Linc's. She again appeared in 1997 with the title role in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, a film that partly paid homage to her '70s blaxploitation movies. As of 2004^[update], she appears in the cable television series The L Word as Kit Porter and occasionally guest-stars in such television series as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (where she is a recurring character).

Personal life

Grier dated basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar during the early 1970s and actor/comedian Richard Pryor in 1977. She was also romantically linked to actor/comedian Freddie Prinze in the 1970s. In 1998, she was engaged to music executive Kevin Evans, but the engagement was called off in 1999.

According to one of the many John Lennon biographies,^{citation needed} she was at the famed Troubadour night club in Hollywood the night Lennon was ejected for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers.

Awards/nominations

• Black Reel Awards

• 2000, Best Actress: Bones (Nominated)

• Daytime Emmy Awards

• 2000, Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program: Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Ever Child (Nominated)

• Golden Globe

• 1998, Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy: Jackie Brown (Nominated)

• Image Awards

• 2006, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: The L Word (Nominated)
• 2005, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: The L Word (Nominated)
• 2004, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Law & Order: SVU (Nominated)
• 2003, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Law & Order: SVU (Nominated)
• 2002, Outstanding Actress in a Mini-Series/ Television Movie: 3 a.m. (Nominated)
• 2000, Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series: Linc's (Nominated)
• 1999, Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series: Linc's (Nominated)
• 1998, Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture: Jackie Brown (Nominated)

• Satellite Awards

• 1998, Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy Motion Picture: Jackie Brown (Nominated)

• Screen Actors Guild

• 1998, Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Jackie Brown (Nominated)

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1970	Beyond the Valley of the Dolls	Partygoer
1971	Women in Cages	Alabama
	The Big Doll House	Grear
1972	Hit Man	Gozelda
	Black Mama, White Mama	Lee Daniels
	The Big Bird Cage	Blossom
	Cool Breeze	Mona
1973	The Arena	Mamawi
	Scream Blacula Scream	Lisa
	Coffy	Coffy
	The Twilight People	Ayesa, the Panther Woman
1974	Foxy Brown	Foxy Brown
1975	Friday Foster	Friday Foster
	Bucktown	Aretha
	Sheba, Baby	Sheba Shayne
1976	Drum	Regine
1977	Greased Lightning	Mary Jones
1981	Fort Apache the Bronx	Charlotte
1983	Something Wicked This Way Comes	Dust Witch
	Tough Enough	Myra
1985	On the Edge	Cora
	Miami Vice	Valerie Gordon
1987	The Allnighter	Sgt. McLeesh
1988	Above the Law	Delores 'Jacks' Jackson
1989	The Package	Ruth Butler
1990	Class of 1999	Ms. Connors
1991	Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey	Ms. Wardroe
1993	Posse	Phoebe
1996	Mars Attacks!	Louise Williams
	Escape from L.A.	Hershe Las Palmas
	Original Gangstas	Laurie Thompson
1997	Jackie Brown	Jackie Brown
1999	Holy Smoke!	Carol
	In Too Deep	Det. Angela Wilson
	Jawbreaker	Detective Vera Cruz
2000	Snow Day	Tina
	3 AM
	Wilder	Detective Della Wilder
2001	Ghosts of Mars	Commander Helena Braddock
	Law & Order
2002	The Adventures of Pluto Nash	Flura Nash
2004 - 2009	The L Word	Kate "Kit" Porter
2005	Back in the Day	Mrs. Cooper
2008	Ladies of the House (TV movie)	Birdie

Discography

• "Long Time Woman" (1971, from the film The Big Doll House)

References

External links

• Pam Grier at the Internet Movie Database