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- Caption: Cloris Leachman
- Description:
Cloris Leachman
Born: Apr 30, 1926 in Des Moines, Iowa
Occupation: Actor
Active: '70s-2000s
Major Genres: Comedy, Drama
Career Highlights: The Last Picture Show, Kiss Me Deadly, The Iron Giant
First Major Screen Credit: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Biography
Cloris Leachman seems capable of playing any kind of role, and she has consistently demonstrated her versatility in films and on TV since the 1950s. On the big screen, she can be seen in such films as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Last Picture Show (1971), for which she won an Oscar; and Young Frankenstein (1974). On TV, she played the mother on Lassie from 1957-58, and Phyllis Lindstrom on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) and her own series, Phyllis (1975-77). She was a staple on many of the dramatic shows of the '50s, and a regular on Charlie Wild, Private Detective (1950-52), and The Facts of Life. Leachman has won three Emmy Awards and continues to make TV, stage, and film appearances, including a turn as Granny in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) and supplying her voice for the animated Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and The Iron Giant (1999). In 1999, she could be seen heading the supporting cast in Wes Craven's Music of the Heart.
Spouse(s) George Englund (1953-1979)
Awards
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress
1971 The Last Picture Show
BAFTA Awards
Best Supporting Actress
1971 The Last Picture Show
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries/Movie
1973 A Brand New Life
Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series
1974, 1975 Mary Tyler Moore
Outstanding Supporting Individual Performance - Variety/Music Program
1975 Cher
Daytime Emmy - Outstanding Performer In A Children's Series
1983 ABC Afterschool Specials: The Woman Who Willed a Miracle (#11.4)
Outstanding Individual Performance - Variety/Music Program
1984 Screen Actors Guild 50th Anniversary Celebration
Outstanding Guest Actress - Drama Series
1998 Promised Land
Outstanding Guest Actress - Comedy Series
2002, 2006 Malcolm in the Middle
Golden Globe Awards
Best TV Actress - Comedy/Musical
1976 Phyllis
Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an Academy Award, nine-time Emmy and Golden Globe winning American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other female performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award.
Biography
Early life
Leachman, the eldest of three sisters, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., to Buck and Cloris Leachman. She majored in drama at Northwestern University, where she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta and a classmate of future comic actor Paul Lynde. Leachman began appearing on television and in films shortly after competing in Miss America as Miss Chicago 1946.
Early career
After winning a scholarship in the beauty pageant, Leachman studied acting in New York City at the Actors Studio with Elia Kazan. She appeared in the Broadway production of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba.[1]
She appeared in many live television broadcasts in the 1950s, including such programs as Suspense and Studio One. She was also one of the Raisonette Girls in the 1960's.
She made her feature film debut in Robert Aldrich's film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, released in 1955. Leachman was several months pregnant during the filming, and appears in one scene running down a darkened highway barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat. A year later she appeared opposite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin in The Rack (1956). She later appeared with Newman again in a brief role as a prostitute in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
Nonetheless, she continued to mainly work on television, her appearances including the classic It's a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone, in which she played Billy Mumy's mother, Rawhide, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Lassie, in which she played Timmy's mom, Ruth Martin, for one season before being replaced by June Lockhart.
Recognition and acclaim
Leachman has won numerous awards during her lengthy career. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in The Last Picture Show (1971), based on the bestselling book by Larry McMurtry. She played the high school gym teacher's wife, with whom Timothy Bottoms' character has an affair. Director Peter Bogdanovich had predicted to Leachman during production that she would win an Academy Award for her performance. The part was originally offered to Ellen Burstyn, who wanted another role in the film.[2]
Leachman has also won a record-setting eight primetime and one daytime Emmy Awards and been nominated over 20 times for her work in television over the years, most notably as the character of neighbor/landlady/nosy friend Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The character was a fixture on the program for five years and was subsequently featured in a spinoff series, Phyllis (1975-1977), for which Leachman garnered a Golden Globe award. In 1978 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
In 1986, Leachman returned to television, replacing Charlotte Rae's character Edna Garrett as the den mother on The Facts of Life. Leachman's role, as Edna's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, could not save the long-running series, and it was canceled two years later.
Leachman (second from left) appearing in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980).She has voice acted in numerous animated films, including My Little Pony: The Movie, The Iron Giant, and most notably as the voice of the cantankerous sky pirate Dola in Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 feature Castle in the Sky. Dubbed by Disney in 1998, Leachman's performance in this film received nearly unanimous priase.
Leachman played embittered, greedy, Slavic “Grandma Ida” on the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, for which she won two Emmy Awards, both for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (once in 2002, then again in 2006). She was nominated for the same role in that category six consecutive years.
Later television credits include the successful Lifetime Television miniseries Beach Girls with Rob Lowe and Julia Ormond.
Leachman was nominated for a SAG Award for her role as the wine-soaked, former jazz singer and grandmother Evelyn in the Sony feature Spanglish opposite Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni. She had replaced an ailing Anne Bancroft in the role. The film reunited her with her Mary Tyler Moore Show writer-producer-director James L. Brooks. That same year she appeared with Sandler again, in the remake of The Longest Yard. She also appeared in Kurt Russell comedy Sky High.
In 2006, Leachman's performance alongside Sir Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening in the HBO special Mrs. Harris earned her an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or TV movie as well as a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.
On May 14, 2006, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Drake University.
Mel Brooks films
Leachman has appeared in three Mel Brooks films. She played Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974), in which the mere mention of her character's name frightens all horses within earshot (merely a silly joke: Blücher is rumored to be German for "glue," although the actual word for glue is Klebstoff). She also appeared in High Anxiety, as demented psychiatric nurse Charlotte Diesel, and as Madame Defarge in the segment of History of the World: Part I which parodied Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. In 2006 rumors have surfaced that she would have been reviving her role from Young Frankenstein in the upcoming Broadway production opposite Megan Mullally (replacing formerly cast Kristin Chenoweth) and Roger Bart. Leachman showed her interest in reprising her role, but in July 2007 it was announced that Leachman won't. Instead the role went to Andrea Martin in favor of having an entirely new cast for the stage musical.
Personal life
Leachman was married for 26 years (1953 to 1979) to the Hollywood impresario George Englund, with whom she had four sons and one daughter, most of whom are in show business. One son is currently a fireman in California. Leachman and Englund divorced in 1979. Englund had a reputation of being a ladies' man and was reportedly unfaithful during the marriage, including having an affair with Joan Collins.[3]
One of her sons, Bryan Englund, died from a drug overdose in 1986. Some reports state that it was an overdose of ulcer medication, while others, such as in the Lifetime television program Intimate Portrait: Cloris Leachman (in which Leachman participated), state that it was from cocaine.[4][5]
Another son, George Englund, Jr., was the second husband of actress Sharon Stone.[6] Leachman's other children include Adam Englund, Dinah Englund and Morgan Englund. She has several grandchildren.
Leachman's former mother-in-law was the character actress Mabel Albertson, best known for playing Samantha's mother-in-law on the ABC sitcom Bewitched. Mabel's brother, the actor Jack Albertson, won his Academy Award three years before Leachman did.
Leachman is a longtime resident of Brentwood, California.
Trivia
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
Leachman posed "au naturel" on the cover of "Alternative Medicine Digest" (issue 15, 1997) body-painted with images of fruit. This was a parody, or imitation, of the famous Demi Moore body painted nude Vanity Fair photo.
Leachman was a friend of Marlon Brando, whom she met while studying under Elia Kazan in the 1950s. She introduced him to her husband, who became close to Brando as well, directing him in The Ugly American and writing a memoir about their friendship called Marlon Brando: The Way It's Never Been Done Before (2005).[7]
Cloris Leachman is the name eventually given by Pat Morita at the end of an episode of Robot Chicken as he is trying to pronounce Corey Feldman.
In the Family Guy episode Petarded, Peter Griffin imagines what it would be like to legally buy Cloris Leachman; he orders her to juggle, though she says she can't.
She is left-handed.
Filmography
Carnegie Hall (1947)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Rack (1956)
The Chapman Report (1962)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)
WUSA (1970)
The People Next Door (1970)
The Steagle (1971)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Charley and the Angel (1973)
Dillinger (1973)
Happy Mother's Day, Love George (1973)
Daisy Miller (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Crazy Mama (1975)
The Mouse and His Child (1977) (voice)
High Anxiety (1977)
The Muppet Movie (1979) (cameo)
The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)
Scavenger Hunt (1979)
Soggy Bottom, USA (1980)
Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)
Foolin' Around (1980)
Yesterday (1981)
History of the World, Part I (1981)
My Strange Uncle (1981) (short subject)
Shadow Play (1986)
My Little Pony: The Movie (1986) (voice)
Walk Like a Man (1987)
Hansel and Gretel (1988)
Prancer (1989)
Texasville (1990)
Love Hurts (1991)
The Giant of Thunder Mountain (1991) (narrator)
Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas (1991) (documentary)
Falsely Accused (1993)
My Boyfriend's Back (1993)
The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)
A Troll in Central Park (1994) (voice)
Nobody's Girls: Five Women of the West (1995) (documentary)
Now and Then (1995)
Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996) (voice)
Never Too Late (1997)
Touched by an Angel (as Ruth) (1997 2003))
Gen¹³ (1998) (voice) (unreleased)
The Iron Giant (1999) (voice)
Music of the Heart (1999)
Hanging Up (2000)
The Amati Girls (2000)
Manna from Heaven (2002)
Alex & Emma (2003)
Bad Santa (2003)
Castle in the Sky (1986) (voice in 2003 English dubbed version)
The Californians (2004)
Spanglish (2004)
The Longest Yard (2005)
Sky High (2005)
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Beerfest (2006)
The Women (2008)
Television work
Cloris Leachman as Queen Hippolyte on the Wonder Woman seriesHold It Please (1949) (canceled after 3 episodes)
Charlie Wild, Private Detective (1950-1952)
Bob and Ray (regular performer in 1952)
Lassie (cast member from 1957-1958)
The Man in the Moon (1960)
Silent Night, Lonely Night (1969)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (cast member from 1970-1975)
Suddenly Single (1971)
Of Thee I Sing (1972)
Haunts of the Very Rich (1972)
A Brand New Life (1973)
Crime Club (1973)
Dying Room Only (1973)
The Migrants (1974)
Hitchhike! (1974)
Pete 'n' Tillie (1974)
Thursday's Game (1974)
Ernie, Madge and Artie (1974)
Death Sentence (1974)
Someone I Touched (1975)
A Girl Named Sooner (1975)
Phyllis (1975-1977)
Death Scream (1975)
The New Original Wonder Woman (1975) (pilot for series)
The Love Boat (1976) (pilot for series)
It Happened One Christmas (1977)
Long Journey Back (1978)
Backstairs at the White House (1979) (miniseries)
Willa (1979)
Mrs. R's Daughter (1979)
S.O.S. Titanic (1979)
The Oldest Living Graduate (1980)
The Acorn People (1981)
Advice to the Lovelorn (1981)
Miss All-American Beauty (1982)
The Woman Who Willed a Miracle (1983)
(1983)
The Demon Murder Case (1983)
(1984)
Breakfast with Les and Bess (1985)
Deadly Intentions (1985)
Blind Alleys (1985)
Love Is Never Silent (1985)
The Little Troll Prince (1985) (voice)
Ladies of the Corridor (1986)
Castle in the Sky (1986)
The Facts of Life (cast member from 1986-1988)
The Facts of Life Down Under (1987)
Going to the Chapel (1988)
The Nutt House (1989) (canceled after a few weeks)
Fine Things (1990)
The Simpsons (1991) (voice)
Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (1993)
The Nanny (1994)
Malcolm in The Middle (guest star as Malcolm's grandmother; won an Emmy Award for guest appearance)
The Ellen Show (2001)
Family Guy (2004) (voice)
Beach Girls (2005 mini-series)
Two and A Half Men (TV episode "Madame And Her Special Friend") (2005)
The Wedding Bells (TV episode "The Fantasy") (2007)
Lake Placid 2 (2007) - Actor/Actress/Director: Cloris Leachman
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