The legendary actor Lee Grant makes her first appearance on the podcast. Lee has starred in countless films over seven decades of her career. Her first screen role was in 1951 in “Detective Story” where she was subsequently nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. Not long after this impressive start to her film career, Lee fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist and was unable to find screen work for some 12 years, the most vital years for an ingenue such as she was. Lee was able to recover her career in the late 60’s after a big break being cast on the hugely successful TV series “Peyton Place”. After that she went on to unprecedented series of film role in “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), “Valley of the Dolls” (1967), “The Landlord” (1970), “Shampoo” (1975), and “Mulholland Drive”.
Before her acting career could even wan in the early 80’s, Lee decided to pursue a new career in as a director. She ended up making a series of groundbreaking award-winning documentaries including “When Women Kill” (1983), What Sex Am I? (1985) and “Battered” (1989), to name a few. Lee has also written a best selling memoir called “I Said Yes to Everything” which I highly recommend. Lastly, Film Forum is about to begin an extraordinarily expansive and comprehensive retrospective of Lee’s work, both acting and directing. It runs from Sunday, November 17 through Wednesday, February 12, 2020. Tickets and details can be found on the Film Forum website.
