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Lee Grant (October 31, 1927) is an Academy Award-winning American theater, film and television actress, and film director who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.

Early life

Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal in New York City to Eastern European Jewish immigrants.

She performed as a ballerina with the New York Metropolitan Opera at the age of four, and during her childhood studied dance and acting.

She established herself as a dramatic actress on Broadway while a teenager and was praised for her role as a shoplifter in the play Detective Story.

Career

Grant made her film debut in the movie version of Detective Story and received her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination, and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify against her husband, the playwright Arnold Manoff, the father of her only child, her daughter, actress Dinah Manoff, Grant refused to testify and was ultimately blacklisted. She continued to work in theater and resumed her film career in the early 1960s, and also appeared in the television series Peyton Place, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama.

She received Academy Award nominations for The Landlord (1970), and Voyage of the Damned (1977). She won an Oscar for Shampoo (1975). She has also directed several documentary films, including Down and Out in America (1986) which won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. In recent years she has directed a series of Intimate Portrait episodes (for Lifetime Television) that celebrate a diverse range of accomplished women.

She appeared as a cunning lawyer/murderess on an episode of Columbo. She also had her own sitcom, a series entitled Fay (1975), but it was not successful. Grant was vocal in assigning blame for the failure of the series, which was about the travails of a mature, sexually active woman, which may have turned off some viewers.

Grant also guest starred on Empty Nest, a TV series in which her daughter Dinah Manoff was a regular.

Her other film roles include:

• In the Heat of the Night (1967)
• Valley of the Dolls (1967)
• The Landlord (1970)
• Plaza Suite (1971)
• Portnoy's Complaint (1972)
• Airport '77 (1977)
• Damien: Omen II (1978)
• When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979)
• Teachers (1984)
• Defending Your Life (1992)
• Mulholland Drive (2001)
• Going Shopping (2005)

External link

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