Cloris Leachman life and biography

Character actress Cloris Leachman has won eight Emmy Awards plus an Oscar in 60 years of work in television and films. An actress of remarkable range, she has played both winsome dramatic leads and unpredictable, smart-mouthed old dames. She was named Miss Chicago of 1946 and started her acting career a few years later, appearing in the original Broadway productions of South Pacific (1950, as understudy to Mary Martin) and The Crucible (1953, by Arthur Miller). Her great burst of creativity and fame began in 1970, when she played the neurotic landlady Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) and the spinoff sitcom Phyllis (1975-77). In those same years she won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her turn as the anguished small-town coach's wife in The Last Picture Show (1971), then won raves for her zany performance as the castle crone Frau Blucher in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein. She has made hundreds of TV appearances on shows ranging from The Twilight Zone to Ellen, and was Emmy-nominated six straight years (winning in 2002 and 2006) for her recurring guest spots as cranky Grandma Ida on TV's Malcolm In the Middle. She appeared on Dancing With the Stars in the fall of 2008, becoming at age 82 the oldest contestant ever on that TV show.

Extra credit: Her eight prime-time Emmy Awards are the most ever by a single actress. She also won a daytime Emmy for the 1983 ABC Afterschool Special, The Woman Who Willed a Miracle... Leachman was married to producer George Englund from 1953 until their divorce in 1979. They had four sons and a daughter: Adam (b. 1954), Brian (b. 1956), George Jr. (b. 1957) and Morgan (b. 1964), and Dinah (birthdate unknown). Before Leachman, the oldest Dancing With the Stars contestant was George Hamilton at age 66. Another actress of the same physical type is Irene Ryan of Beverly Hillbillies fame. Leachman studied at Elia Kazan's Actor's Studio in New York in the 1940s; Marlon Brando was a fellow student... Leachman once described the personality of her character Phyllis as "the sure firm touch on the wrong note."

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