"My mother was insistent that I become an artist or performer of some kind. She had me dancing at The Met when I was three," recalls Oscar-winning actress Lee Grant. "She tried dancing, singing, everything — but nothing took. It wasn't until I was asked to leave my first high school that we made one last go to see if I could be an actor. That took."
Grant made her film debut in William Wyler's 1951 film noir Detective Story, for which she was Oscar-nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She earned another three nominations for 1971's The Landlord, 1975's Shampoo, and 1977's Voyage of the Damned. For Hal Ashby's Shampoo, in which she starred opposite Warren Beatty, Grant won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
"Shampoo is full of fond memories! Hal Ashby always gave his actors so much freedom to play. Just to play! It was Carrie Fisher's first film and I played her mother, and she was just delicious in her little tennis outfit. So good, so angry at me, so ready to go to bed with my hairdresser. And who could blame her!" Grant reflects. "Warren's beauty in that film can’t be understated. And he really came up with that project — he and Bob Towne. What a gift to be surrounded by such talented, playful, beautiful people!"
Grant moved behind the camera to make her feature directorial debut with 1980's Tell Me a Riddle. "Directing was a second career, a new lease on a working life," she says. (At 98, Grant is said to be the oldest living director.) "It was so freeing to be able to work with other actors, to collaborate and create with them... Actors were still my way into filmmaking, and I was just very, very lucky to always have brilliant cameramen to rely on for the rest."
Tell Me a Riddle recently received a restoration courtesy of The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, along with Grant's short film The Stronger and her Oscar-winning documentary Down and Out in America (1986). "I really don't have the words to express how truly moved I am that these stories, that the work of these actors and artists that came along on these rides with me, are being rediscovered and re-embraced."
Below, Grant shares with A.frame five of the films that have meant the most to her throughout her life.
Directed by: William Wyler | Written by: Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht
The first film I remember being really, really moved by was Wuthering Heights. In fact, seeing this film, one afternoon after school at my neighborhood cinema on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is probably my first movie-going memory. I've been in love with Heathcliff ever since — and he with me. We were those lovers, those were our moors. I loved slipping into the screen from then on. I loved him, and I loved [Laurence] Olivier for bringing him to life just for me. And that William Wyler was the first film director I was able to work with only made it feel all the more star-crossed.
Directed by: Barbara Kopple
The first short film I directed, The Stronger, was invited to play at a festival in San Francisco. It played, and right after it, Harlan County, U.S.A. came on. It floored me. To see the depth of those characters, and the scale and immediacy of that story come to life without any studio support or trickery or magic. That you could take a camera out into the world and find those people and tell those stories without needing anyone's permission.
And when Barbara Kopple stood up, this young, unassuming, brilliant woman, it changed my life. It really did, because without that, I would not have seen the possibility in documentaries.
Directed by: William Wyler | Written by: Lillian Hellman
Bette Davis. What more is there to say?
Directed by: Ralph Nelson | Written by: James Poe
Sidney Poitier was so beautiful in this movie. Just beyond, supernatural. And the fire he had — in that role, and in life — that "how can you not respect me, how could you not follow me" power. He was truly, truly one of a kind. And this film is all his.
Directed by: Elia Kazan | Written by: Budd Schulberg
From Brando's power, to the "we've got to do what’s right, and we've got to do it together if we can" ethos, so much of this film made its way into my own work, both in films and in life. It's that constant struggle with Kazan. That he could be this brilliant, and this prolific, and have cooperated with HUAC [House Un-American Activities Committee] at the same time. It's hard to reconcile, but without him, and his contradictions, we wouldn't have his films. And this film, in particular, with its heroic tattletale. Fascinating.
