Lee Remick was a Hollywood actress that rose to prominence in the 1960s thanks to roles
in films such as Anatomy of a Murder and Days of Wine and Roses.
Sadly, the beloved figure suffered during her final years after being diagnosed with
cancer in 1989.
Although the last few years of Lee's life were hard, one of the last memories that she
was given was a happy one.
Just months before passing away, Lee made her final public appearance accepting her
very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!
Join Facts Verse as rare photos show inside Lee Remick's final days.
Lee Remick was born on December 14, 1935, in Quincy, Massachusetts.
When she was only seven years old, her parents tragically divorced.
Left alone with her mother and brother, the family moved to New York City and attempted
to start a new life for themselves.
While Lee’s father had worked in clothing, her mother was an actress on the stage.
Understandably, it was her mother’s profession that Lee decided to gravitate towards when
it came time for her to start developing some aspirations of her own.
Lee’s mother was an actress by the name of Gertrude Margaret Waldo, and she helped
her daughter follow in her footsteps.
When Lee was still young, her mother enrolled her in a prestigious dancing academy by the
name of the Swoboda School of Dance at the Hewitt School in New York.
There, Lee received personal dancing lessons from esteemed ballerina Maria Swoboda.
While training with Maria Swoboda, Lee studied with a special emphasis on theatrical dancing.
Maria Swoboda had previously been a member of the Bolshoi Ballet, a Russian classical
ballet company that has long since been considered one of the preeminent of its kind.
After retiring from her work as a performer, Maria came to New York and began sharing her
skills with young girls around the area.
Lee was lucky enough to count herself amongst Maria's pupils, and the training indeed came
in handy later during her Hollywood career!
When it came time for Lee Remick to pursue her higher education, she decided to study
at a school named Barnard College, which was located in Manhattan.
In addition to her studies at Barnard College, Lee also did some studying at the Actors Studio.
However, Lee also had to work for a living in order to support herself and found it incredibly
hard to balance her active studies with her need to work.
Soon into her time studying at Barnard College, Lee decided to call it quits in regards to
her formal education and focus more specifically on acting.
A professor at Barnard College had advised Lee that she was stretching herself too thin
and needed to decide whether she wanted to focus specifically on pursuing an education,
becoming an actress, or working a menial job.
As one might guess, when Lee's Barnard College professor gave her this important piece of
advice regarding her future, Lee realized that what she really wanted to do was become
an actress.
She quit Barnard College and started auditioning for as many roles as she could.
She had already begun acting professionally during college, and it wasn't difficult for
Lee to take the leap of faith and make the full transition into the career.
Lee made her debut on Broadway in 1953, acting in a production by the name of Be Your Age.
Given Lee's future success, one might imagine that the play was a huge hit!
However, it didn't perform very well with audiences and instead was put to an end after
only five measly performances.
Still, Lee had stood out to the crowd, and the short-lived show managed to bring the
burgeoning actress some much-needed recognition.
Like her mother before her, Lee always maintained a stronger love for acting on the stage over
acting on film.
However, the medium of film proved to be where Lee found the majority of her commercial success.
The actress's first performance in a film came when she was only 22 years old.
She was cast alongside star Andy Griffith in the film A Face in the Crowd.
Contrary to the film’s title, Lee’s role in it ended up making her much more than just
A Face in the Crowd!
She would soon become a major star, thanks to her talents.
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Soon after making her silver-screen debut alongside Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd,
actress Lee Remick’s career was taking off quicker than ever before!
She starred in the film Tribute, marking her first collaboration with actor Jack Lemmon.
The two would work again in the 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses, which netted Lee an
Academy Award nomination.
During her career, Lee became known for taking on roles that were psychologically demanding.
She could be seen playing neurotic female characters in the films A Delicate Balance
and The Letter, both of which garnered the actress immense acclaim from both critics
and the audience.
Given how good the actress was at portraying neurotic characters, many began to believe
that Lee must be somewhat disturbed herself!
However, Lee had a happy childhood and was a well-balanced adult.
Lee Remick starred in many, many films over the course of her career, with some of her
most notable roles including starring alongside Paul Newman in The Long Hot Summer and starring
opposite Frank Sinatra in a film by the name of The Europeans.
While Lee may have never become a movie star that sold tickets based on her name alone,
she became a highly respected Hollywood actress that always turned in a fantastic performance
when it was asked of her.
As Lee Remick progressed through her professional career, she was also progressing through a
few notable romances.
In 1958, Lee had married a television producer named Bill Colleran.
The pair went on to have two children together before eventually divorcing in 1969.
Their two children were named Kate and Matthew, and they survived Lee after her 1991 death.
A year later, Lee married another television producer, this time by the name of William
Rory Gowans, or Kip. Lee married Kip Gowans in 1970, and they remained married until the
actress's death in 1991.
Lee Remick's very last acting role was in the made-for-television feature named Dark
Holiday.
The film was based on the real-life story of a traveling woman who was talked into buying
an antique in Turkey that she didn’t want and unwittingly got arrested attempting to
take the antique out of the country.
Also known as Passport to Terror, Lee had no idea that her role in the made-for-television
feature would end up being her very last role ever.
The same year the film premiered, Lee Remick was diagnosed with cancer after tumors were
found within both her kidneys and her lungs.
According to Lee, she had felt totally fine up until the diagnosis.
However, once she learned the truth, the illness hit her like a ton of bricks!
After learning about her cancer diagnosis, Lee felt adamant that she was going to be
able to fight her way through the disease.
She did the best she could, and she also became a pretty strong advocate for others fighting
the disease.
However, Lee’s battle with cancer didn’t end up proving too successful, with the actress
dying two years later.
When it became apparent that the cancer wasn’t going to go away, the doctors decided to cease
Lee's treatments so that she could live the last remaining weeks of her life in peace.
Treatments were stopped two weeks before Lee's death, allowing her to die peacefully without
the hassle of painful and intrusive cancer treatments that didn't seem to be doing much
good anyway.
Many close friends visited Lee around this time, including former costar Jack Lemmon.
The two had remained friends after working together multiple times, and Jack shared it
was hard to see her in the state that she was.
Other people that came out of the woodwork to say their goodbyes to Lee in the final
weeks of her life included James Stewart, who had starred with Lee in the film Anatomy
of a Murder.
Like Jack Lemmon, James had immense professional respect for Lee and considered her a wonderful
person and close friend.
Lee died in July of 1991, and her last public appearance had been in April of the same year.
Perhaps knowing that her time on Earth was coming to an end, the powers that be finally
blessed Lee Remick with her very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Lee’s final public appearance was to accept this star, which she did with all the style
and grace that fans had come to expect.
If Lee was suffering at the time, which she most definitely was, it wasn’t apparent
to those in the audience.
In the years before her death, Lee Remick had become friends with a fellow cancer-fighter
named Jill Ireland.
For those that don't know, Jill was the wife of Charles Bronson up until her death.
Jill passed away in May 1990 from cancer, a little over a year before Lee.
While the two were alive and together, they did their best to support each other through
their respective battles.
At the time of Lee's death in July of 1991, she was 55.
Despite the fact that beloved Hollywood actress Lee Remick died tragically of cancer at the
age of only 55, she was blessed during the time that she was alive in regards to both
her Hollywood career and her loving family.
Now it's time to hear from you: did you know that actress Lee Remick died from cancer in
1991, or did you think she was still around today?
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