Cloris Leachman

About Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman (1926–2021) was an American actress and comedian whose career spanned more than seven decades across stage, film, and television. Raised in Des Moines, Iowa, she studied drama at Northwestern University and competed in the 1946 Miss America pageant as Miss Chicago. She later moved to New York, where she studied at the Actors Studio under Elia Kazan and began working on Broadway and in the emerging medium of live television. Her early screen career included Kiss Me Deadly and numerous television appearances before she gained major recognition for her dramatic performance as Ruth Popper in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Leachman became equally celebrated for comedy, most notably as the vain, meddlesome Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off, Phyllis. She also became a memorable member of Mel Brooks’ ensemble, playing Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein, Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety, and Madame Defarge in History of the World, Part I. Her ability to move convincingly between serious drama and broad comedy became one of the defining characteristics of her career.

Leachman remained remarkably active into later life, introducing herself to new generations through roles such as Grandma Ida on Malcolm in the Middle and Maw Maw on Raising Hope, as well as appearances in film, television, and reality programming. Over the course of her career, she won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy, and an Academy Award, and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2011.