Cloris Leachman - Personal Life

Personal Life

From 1953 to 1979, Leachman was married to Hollywood impresario George Englund. Leachman's former mother-in-law was character actress Mabel Albertson, best known for playing Samantha Stevens' bewildered and frustrated mother-in-law on Bewitched. The marriage produced five children: Bryan (died 1986), Morgan, Adam, Dinah and George Englund, Jr. Some of them are in show business. Her son Morgan played Dylan on Guiding Light throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Leachman's son Bryan died from a drug overdose on February 25, 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. In an interview by Cal Fussman in Esquire, Jan. 2009, Leachman stated, "I've been so relieved and so grateful to not have a god to believe in." She called herself an agnostic in an interview with Grandparents magazine. In 2012, Leachman said she was an atheist.

The Englunds were Bel Air neighbors of Judy Garland and Sid Luft, and of their children, Lorna and Joey Luft, during the early 1960s. Lorna Luft states in her memoir Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir that Leachman was "the kind of mom I'd only seen on TV". Knowing of the turmoil at the Garland home but never mentioning it, Leachman prepared meals for Judy's children and made them feel welcome whenever they needed a place to stay.

Leachman was also 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).

In a parody of the famous Demi Moore Vanity Fair magazine cover photo, Leachman posed "au naturel" on the cover of Alternative Medicine Digest (issue 15, 1997) body-painted with images of fruit. A vegetarian, Leachman also posed clad only in lettuce for a 2009 PETA advertisement.

Leachman's autobiography Cloris: My Autobiography was published in March 2009. She wrote the bestselling book with her former husband, George Englund.