Was blacklisted in 1951 by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for refusing to testify against her husband, blacklisted playwright/screenwriter Arnold Manoff. As a result, she got very little work for about 12 years.
Turned down the role of Dorothy in "The Golden Girls" (1985), because she didn't want to play a grandmother.
Lee Grant Detailed Biography
Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal in New York, New York to Eastern European Jewish immigrants. She performed as a ballerina with the New York Metropolitan Opera at the age of four, and during her childhood studied dance and acting. She established herself as a dramatic actress on Broadway while a teenager and was praised for her role as a shoplifter in the play Detective Story.
Grant made her film debut in the movie version and received her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination, and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify against her husband, the playwright Arnold Manoff, the father of her only child, her daughter, actress Dinah Manoff, Grant refused to testify and was ultimately blacklisted. She continued to work in theater and resumed her film career in the early 1960s, and also appeared in the television series Peyton Place, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama.
She received Academy Award nominations for The Landlord (1970), and Voyage of the Damned (1977). She won an Oscar for Shampoo (1975). She has also directed several documentary films, including Down and Out in America (1986) which won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. In recent years she has directed a series of Intimate Portrait episodes, that celebrate a diverse range of accomplished women.
She appeared as a cunning lawyer/murderess on an episode of Columbo. She also had her own sitcom, a series entitled Fay (1975), but it was not successful. Grant was vocal in assigning blame for the failure of the series, which was about the travails of a mature, sexually active woman, which may have turned off some viewers. Grant has also guest starred in Empty Nest, a series in which her daughter Dinah Manoff was a regular.
Her other film roles include:
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Valley of the Dolls (1967)
Plaza Suite (1971)
Portnoy's Complaint (1972)
Airport '77 (1977)
Damien: Omen II (1978)
When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979)
Teachers (1984)
Defending Your Life (1992)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
