Pam Grier

26Jun2010 Posted by "Ms Beamer" in Jun 26,2010 Black Female Actresses

Pamela Grier

Pamela Suzette “Pam” Grier (born May 26, 1949), is an American actress. Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 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. 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.

Grier came to fame in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison film and blaxploitation films such as 1974′s Foxy Brown.

Grier is listed in the Wikipedia article on “Military brats” (Children who grew up moving frequently in military families) in the article section, “List of Famous Military Brats“. While in Denver, Colorado she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College.

Contrary to previous reports she states that she is not the cousin of National Football League great Rosey Grier or to National Hockey League player Mike Grier.

Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown. She is one of a few African American actresses to have received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for a SAG as well as a Satellite Award for her performance in the iconic film Jackie Brown. .

She received an Emmy Award nomination for her work in an Animated Program Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Ever Child. Rotten Tomatoes has ranked her as the second Greatest Female Action Heroine in film history. Director Quentin Tarantino, in an interview promoting Jackie Brown on Charlie Rose, remarked that she may well have been cinema’s first female action star.

Grier dated basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar during the early 1970s and had a six-month affair with actor/comedian Richard Pryor around 1976-77. 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..

From 2000 to 2008, she dated marketing executive Peter Hempel. In 2010, Grier began appearing in a recurring role on the hit sci-fi series Smallville as the villain Amanda Waller, also known as White Queen, head agent of Checkmate, a covert operations agency.

May 5, 2010 Pam Grier’s Collection of Lessons Learned
New York Times

Life was forever altered when, left unsupervised at an aunt’s home, she was raped by two boys. After that she describes a lonely, traumatized childhood.

May 11, 2010 Pam Grier ‘The L-word’
Pam Grier Blaxploitation Films

“She was the reigning black female sex symbol of the 1970s,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University African and African-American studies professor who specializes in black popular culture. “Had she been able to have film opportunities in the white mainstream in the 1970s, her contemporaries would have been Raquel Welch and Farah Fawcett.”

She played straight club owner Kit Porter on Showtime’s lesbian-themed series “The L Word” and was a cast member in the CW’s Superman series “Smallville.”

All of this from a shy girl from Colorado, who didn’t set out to be an actress, let alone a pinup queen, and marvels at the staying power of her popularity today.

Pam Grier Signs Book in Dallas, Texas

August 2, 2010 In the triple-digit heat, Pam Grier proved she still has drawing power. Pam Grier talked about movies, relationships and the “L” word. Her book signing event filled the auditorium Saturday at the South Dallas Cultural Center, where she talked about her life and Hollywood and followed up with a gracious and patient book signing/photo session.

The gay contingent present was far outweighed by the men and women who obviously watched Grier throughout ’70s cinema.You could literally see the men falling in love all over again with Foxy Brown and the women remembering the heroics of Coffy as inspiration.

Updated: September 2010

Pam Grier: From Sex Symbol to Cult Figure

What you may not have known is that when blaxploitation movies ran out of gas, Grier did not’t. She just moved on to television (Miami Vice, Law and Order: SVU, Linc’s, The L Word and currently a recurring role on Smallville), plays (Fool for Love, The Piano Lesson). She continues to make films with decent parts including playing Queen Latifah’s mother in Just Wright and a role in an upcoming Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts movie.

Pam Grier’s Shocking Claim About Richard Pryor’s Coke Use

In The “L” Word star Pam Grier says in her new memoir that ex-boyfriend Richard Pryor used cocaine so heavily that it caused toxicity in her vagina.

Pam Grier Shakes Off Foxy Brown Image

In an ironic douse to the millions of male libidos around the globe, the actress who made being a tough girl sexy seems happiest riding horses and enjoying the great outdoors. But that is not to say that the Colorado native’s life was void of trauma, scandal, or high drama.

Grier offers up some of what she’s learned in her 40-year career in her memoir “Foxy: My Life in Three Acts”. The book traces her early roles in Roger Corman’s women-in-prison B movies, through her tumultuous love affairs with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Freddie Prinze and Richard Pryor, to her battle with cancer.

There’s no doubt Grier is a badass, but she’s also disarmingly candid about sexual abuse she suffered as a teen and how she gave up her relationship with Abdul-Jabbar because she refused to be the subservient woman required by his Islamic beliefs. Grier also recounts how a conversation with her doctor led to her breakup with Richard Pryor. Pryor’s brilliance and spiral into drug abuse and how it might have contributed to her later cancer makes for tough, but necessary reading.

Grier is cancer free and continues to work at keeping healthy with yoga, Pilate’s and taking a variety of herbs. She just finished a movie with Tom Hanks, is shopping a comedy series idea to networks and has her fingers crossed she’ll be back for the 10th season of “Smallville,” where she plays mysterious Agent Amanda Waller.