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Cloris Leachman
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Height
5' 4"
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Spouse
George Englund (1953 - 1979) (divorced) 4 sons
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
This former Miss America runner-up, oddly enough, is perhaps best remembered (in film, at least) as the hideously ugly Frau Blucher in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974), a comic gem of a performance. In fact, Leachman played an even more unappealing character in Brooks' 1977 Hitchcock parody High Anxiety (and a worse one yet in his 1981 History of the World-Part 1She was genuinely sexy in her debut film, the crazed film noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955); her small but showy role wasn't enough to catapult her to prominence, however. She worked mainly in television, but started getting good parts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Lovers and Other Strangers (1970).
She won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award as a housewife who has an affair with a younger man in 1971's The Last Picture Show (she also showed up in that movie's 1990 sequel, Texasville and won the affection of exploitation movie fans for her over-the-top portrayal of a rampaging female criminal in the Jonathan Demme-directed Crazy Mama (1975). Her handful of other films include Dillinger (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980), Prancer (1989), Love Hurts (1990), and My Boyfriend's Back (1993). Leachman's real claim to fame is her television work, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (1970-77) and its spinoff "Phyllis" (1975-77), and in a variety of madefor-TV movies. She has six Emmy Awards to her credit. She returned to the big screen as Granny in the feature version of TV's Beverly Hillbillies (1993), playing-quite engagingly-the part originated by Irene Ryan. In 1994 she toured on stage as Grandma Moses. |  |
