Pam Grier

[edit] Early life
Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S., the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier, who worked as a mechanic and Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force. She has one sister and one brother, and is a cousin of football player Rosey Grier.[2] Because of her father's military career, her family moved frequently during her childhood, to various places such as England, and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended East High School. While there she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College.


[edit] Career
Grier moved to Los Angeles, California in 1967, where she was initially hired as a receptionist at the American International Pictures (AIP) company. She was discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast her in his women in prison films The Big Doll House (1971), and The Big Bird Cage (1972). While under contract at AIP, she became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, playing big, bold, assertive roles, beginning with Jack Hill's Coffy (1973), in which she plays a nurse who seeks revenge on drug dealers; her character was advertised in the trailer as the "baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town!" The film, which was filled with sexual and violent elements typical of the genre, was a box office hit, and Grier was noted as the first African-American female to headline a film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were all male. In his review of Coffy, film critic Roger Ebert noted that Grier was an actress of "beautiful face and astonishing form" and that she possessed a kind of "physical life" missing from other actresses.[3] Grier subsequently played similar characters in the AIP films Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster, and Sheba, Baby (both 1975).

With the demise of blaxploitation, Grier's career went on hiatus for many years. She acquired progressively larger character roles in the 1980s, including a prostitute in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), a witch in Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983), and Steven Seagal's detective partner in Above the Law (1988). She made guest appearances on Miami Vice, Martin, Night Court and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and also had a recurring role in the TV series Crime Story between 1986 and 1988.

In the late 1990s Grier was a cast member of the Showtime series Linc's. She again appeared in 1997 with the title role in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, a film that partly paid homage to her '70s blaxploitation movies. As of 2004[update], she appears in the cable television series The L Word as Kit Porter and occasionally guest-stars in such television series as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (where she is a recurring character).


[edit] Personal life
Grier dated basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar during the early 1970s and actor/comedian Richard Pryor in 1977. She was also romantically linked to actor/comedian Freddie Prinze in the 1970s. In 1998, she was engaged to music executive Kevin Evans, but the engagement was called off in 1999.

According to one of the many John Lennon biographies,[citation needed] she was at the famed Troubadour night club in Hollywood the night Lennon was ejected for drunkenly heckling The Smothers Brothers.

On the talk show