Lee Remick - Career

Career

Remick made her film debut in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). While filming the movie in Arkansas, Remick lived with a local family and practiced baton twirling so that she would be believable as the teenager who wins the attention of Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith).

After appearing as Eula Varner, the hot-blooded daughter-in-law of Will Varner (Orson Welles) in 1958's The Long, Hot Summer, she appeared in These Thousand Hills as a dance hall girl. Remick came to prominence as a rape victim whose husband is tried for killing her attacker in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder. She made a second film with Elia Kazan called Wild River (1960), co-starring with Montgomery Clift and Jo Van Fleet.

In 1962, she starred opposite Glenn Ford in the Blake Edwards suspense-thriller Experiment in Terror. That same year she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses.

When Marilyn Monroe was fired during the filming of the comedy Something's Got to Give, the studio announced that Remick would be her replacement. However, co-star Dean Martin refused to continue, saying that while he admired Remick, he had signed on to do the picture strictly to work with Monroe.

Remick appeared in the 1964 Broadway musical Anyone Can Whistle, written by Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, which ran for only a week. Remick's performance is captured on the original cast recording. This began a lifelong friendship between Remick and Sondheim, and she later appeared in the landmark 1985 concert version of his musical Follies.

Remick received a Tony Award nomination in 1966 for her role as a blind woman terrorized by drug smugglers in the thriller Wait Until Dark. She co-starred with Gregory Peck in the 1976 horror film The Omen, in which her character's adopted son, Damien, is revealed to be the Anti-Christ.

Remick later appeared in several made-for-TV movies or miniseries (for which she earned seven Emmy nominations). Most were of a historical nature, including two noted miniseries: Ike, in which she portrayed Kay Summersby, alongside Robert Duvall (her co-star in Wait Until Dark) as General Dwight Eisenhower, and Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill where she portrayed Winston Churchill's mother, the American debutante Lady Randolph Churchill who married Lord Randolph Churchill.

In 1990, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. Remick has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard.