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| Birth Name(s) : Cloris Leachman |
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Full Cloris Leachman Biography
Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an Academy Award-, nine-time Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other female performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award.
Leachman, the eldest of three sisters, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Cloris and Buck Leachman, who owned a lumber company. She graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1947. She later majored in drama at Northwestern University, where she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta and a classmate of future comic actor Paul Lynde. Leachman began appearing on television and in films shortly after competing in Miss America as Miss Chicago 1946.
After winning a scholarship in the beauty pageant, Leachman studied acting in New York City at the Actors Studio with Elia Kazan. She appeared in the Broadway production of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba.
She continued to mainly work on television, with appearances including the classic It's a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone, in which she played Billy Mumy's mother; Rawhide; and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Leachman appeared as Ruth Martin, Timmy's adoptive mom, in the last half of season four (1957) of Lassie. She was replaced by June Lockhart in 1958.
In 1986, Leachman returned to television, replacing Charlotte Rae's character Edna Garrett as the den mother on The Facts of Life. Leachman's role, as Edna's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, could not save the long-running series, and it was canceled two years later.Leachman (second from left) appearing in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980).
She has voice acted in numerous animated films, including My Little Pony: The Movie, The Iron Giant, and most notably as the voice of the cantankerous sky pirate Dola in Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 feature Castle in the Sky. Dubbed by Disney in 1998, Leachman's performance in this film received nearly unanimous priase.
Leachman played embittered, greedy, Slavic “Grandma Ida” on the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, for which she won two Emmy Awards, both for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (once in 2002, then again in 2006). She was nominated for playing that same character for six consecutive years.
Later television credits include the successful Lifetime Television miniseries Beach Girls with Rob Lowe and Julia Ormond. Leachman was nominated for a SAG Award for her role as the wine-soaked, former jazz singer and grandmother Evelyn in the Sony feature Spanglish opposite Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni. She had replaced an ailing Anne Bancroft in the role. The film reunited her with her Mary Tyler Moore Show writer-producer-director James L. Brooks. That same year she appeared with Sandler again, in the remake of The Longest Yard. She also appeared in Kurt Russell comedy Sky High.
In 2006, Leachman's performance alongside Sir Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening in the HBO special Mrs. Harris earned her an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or TV movie as well as a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.
Leachman has appeared in three Mel Brooks films. She played Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974), in which the mere mention of her character's name frightens all horses within earshot (merely a silly joke: Blücher is rumored to be German for "glue," although the actual word for glue is Klebstoff). She also appeared in High Anxiety, as demented psychiatric nurse Charlotte Diesel, and as Madame Defarge in the segment of History of the World: Part I which parodied Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.
She auditioned for a chance in reviving her role from Young Frankenstein in the 2007 Broadway production opposite Megan Mullally (replacing formerly cast Kristin Chenoweth) and Roger Bart. However, Andrea Martin was cast in the role. Mel Brooks was quoted as saying that Leachman, at 81, was too old for the role. "We don't want her to die on stage," he told columnist Army Archerd. ]
Leachman was married for 26 years (1953 to 1979) to the Hollywood impresario George Englund, with whom she had four sons and one daughter, most of whom are in show business. One son is currently a fireman in California. Leachman and Englund divorced in 1979. Englund had a reputation of being a ladies' man and was reportedly unfaithful during the marriage, including having an affair with Joan Collins.
One of her sons, Bryan Englund, died from a drug overdose in 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.
Another son, George Englund, Jr., was the second husband of actress Sharon Stone. Leachman's other children include Adam Englund, Dinah Englund and Morgan Englund. She has several grandchildren.
Leachman's former mother-in-law was the character actress Mabel Albertson, best known for playing Samantha's mother-in-law on the ABC sitcom Bewitched. Mabel's brother, the actor Jack Albertson, won his Academy Award three years before Leachman did.
Leachman posed "au naturel" on the cover of "Alternative Medicine Digest" (issue 15, 1997) body-painted with images of fruit. This was a parody, or imitation, of the famous Demi Moore Vanity Fair magazine cover photo. |
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