Cloris Leachman

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BIRTHDAY

April 30, 1926

Des Moines, IA

RECENT CREDITS

New York, I Love You (FILM) Oct. 16, 2009

American Cowslip (FILM) Jul. 24, 2009

The Women (FILM) Sep. 12, 2008

Megan Mullally Show (TV) Oct. 26, 2006

Beerfest (FILM) Aug. 25, 2006

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BIOGRAPHY

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While other actresses complain about the lack of roles for mature women, this incredibly versatile, octogenarian character player of stage and screen has never lacked for work. Involved in entertainment since her youth, the native Midwesterner performed on the radio while still in high school and headed for New York after competing in the 1946 Miss America pageant. Yet Leachman was never known for her looks. Instead, the Actors Studio-trained thespian impressed audiences with her chameleonlike talents, racking up dramatic credits on Broadway, TV and occasionally film. Although she slowed her pace a bit in the '50s and '60s to raise her five children with producer-director George Englund, she found her greatest success well into her forties. In 1970, she signed on to Mary Tyler Moore as the title character's nosy landlord, a comedic role that earned her two Emmys as well as her own spin-off sitcom. During her tenure, she took home another Emmy for her serious turn as a middle-aged wife facing motherhood in A Brand New Life, the first of many successful TV-movies starring Leachman. She also snagged an Oscar for her devastating performance as a lonely wife in 1971's The Last Picture Show. Although that big-screen success led to a handful of plum parts notably a trio of broad roles in three Mel Brooks comedies, including her hilarious turn as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein, which showed off her knack for bizarre accents the small screen and, to a lesser extent, the stage remained her mediums. By 2006, she had snagged five more Emmys for a total of eight statuettes (plus one Daytime Emmy), and toured the country to great acclaim as the title character in the play Grandma Moses: An American Primitive. And in the '00s, she began popping up in movies more than ever before, usually playing outrageous grandmothers, from senile (Bad Santa) to boozy (Spanglish) to just plain disgusting (Beerfest).

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