Pam Grier

Pamela Suzette Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress and singer.

Grier was born on May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier Jr., who worked as a mechanic and technical sergeant in the United States Air Force.

She has one sister and one brother.

Grier said she is of African American, Hispanic, Chinese, Italian, Filipino, and Cheyenne heritage.

She was raised Catholic and later baptized as a Methodist.

Because of her father's military career, the family moved frequently during Grier's childhood.

In 1956, they moved to Swindon in South West England, United Kingdom, where her father worked on an air force base.

The family returned to the United States in 1958, when Grier's father was transferred to California's Travis Air Force Base, eventually settling in Denver, Colorado, near Lowry Air Force Base.

Grier spent part of her upbringing on her maternal grandparents' sugar beet farm in rural Wyoming, where their ancestors had homesteaded after fleeing west via the Underground Railroad to escape slavery.

Grier attended East High School in Denver, and appeared in a number of stage productions, as well as participating in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition at Metropolitan State College.

Grier moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1967, where she was initially hired to work the switchboard at American International Pictures (AIP).

By Grier's account, hers was one of the only black families in town, though she recalled that they faced no racism or segregation compared to that in the United States: "They didn't care that I was black since they hadn't been raised to hate blacks. Instead, they'd been raised to hate Germans... In the U.S., especially in the South, we were never able to get buses to stop for us, we couldn't eat in certain restaurants, couldn't use certain bathrooms. Up until 1969, there were department stores in which my father and I weren't even allowed to try on clothing."

Described by Quentin Tarantino as cinema's first female action star, she achieved fame for her starring roles in a string of 1970s action, blaxploitation and women in prison films for American International Pictures and New World Pictures.

Her accolades include nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award and a Saturn Award.

While under contract at AIP, she became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation films, playing bold, assertive women, beginning with 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.

Grier is considered to be the first African-American woman to headline an action film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were men.

In his review of Coffy, critic Roger Ebert praised the film for its believable female lead.

He noted that Grier was an actress of "beautiful face and astonishing form" and that she possessed a kind of "physical life" missing from many other attractive actresses.

With the demise of blaxploitation later in the 1970s, Grier appeared in smaller roles for many years.

She is believed to have been discovered by the director Jack Hill, and was cast in Roger Corman women-in-prison films such as The Big Doll House (1971), Women in Cages (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972).

Grier came to prominence with her titular roles in the films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974); her other major films during this period included The Big Doll House (1971), Women in Cages (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972), Black Mama White Mama (1973), Scream Blacula Scream (1973), The Arena (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975), Bucktown (1975) and Friday Foster (1975).

Grier played similar characters in the AIP films Foxy Brown (1974), Sheba, Baby and Friday Foster (both 1975).

She acquired progressively larger character roles in the 1980s, including a druggie prostitute in Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) and a witch in Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983).

In 1985, Grier made her theatrical debut in Sam Sheppard's Fool for Love at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

She had a recurring role on Miami Vice from 1985 to 1989, and made guest appearances on Martin, Night Court and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

She had a recurring role in the TV series Crime Story, between 1986 and 1988.

Grier returned to film as Steven Seagal's detective partner in Above the Law (1988).

Her role in Rocket Gibraltar (1988) was cut due to fears by the film's director, Daniel Petrie, of "repercussions from interracial love scenes".

She appeared on Sinbad, Preston Chronicles, The Cosby Show, The Wayans Brothers Show and Mad TV.

In the late 1990s, Grier was a cast member of the Showtime series Linc's.

In 1994, Grier appeared in Snoop Dogg's video for "Doggy Dogg World".

Grier also appeared in Escape from L.A. (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Jawbreaker (1999), Holy Smoke!, (1999), Bones (2001), Just Wright (2010), Larry Crowne (2011) and Poms (2019).

She appeared in 1996 in John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. and 1997 with the title role in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, films that partly paid homage to her 1970s blaxploitation films.

She was nominated for numerous awards for her work in the Tarantino film.

She portrayed the title character in Tarantino's crime film Jackie Brown (1997), nearly three decades after her first starring role.

On television, Grier portrayed Eleanor Winthrop in the Showtime comedy-drama series Linc's (1998–2000), Kate "Kit" Porter on the Showtime drama series The L Word (2004–2009), and Constance Terry in the ABC sitcom Bless This Mess (2019–2020).

She received praise for her work in the animated series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1999).

IndieWire named Grier one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.