AREAA GLS 2022 Keynote Luncheon Pam Grier

Described by Quentin Tarantino as cinema's first female action star, Pam Grier came to Hollywood in 1970 and within four years she became an icon. Her accolades include an NAACP Image Award and nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award, and a Saturn Award. Pam Grier was born in Winston-Salem, NC, one of four children of Gwendolyn Sylvia (Samuels), a nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier Jr., an Air Force mechanic. Pam was brought up in an African-American household with mixed ancestry. Her maternal grandfather was born in the Philippines and raised in the United States. Because of her father’s military career, Pam moved frequently during childhood. When she was six years old, her family relocated to South West England and after two years, they returned to the United States eventually setting in Denver, Colorado. After high school, Pam Grier enrolled in Denver’s Metropolitan State College and placed second-runner up in the 1967 Miss Colorado pageant. Her career started in 1971, when Roger Corman of New World Pictures launched her with The Big Doll House, about a women's penitentiary, and The Big Bird Cage. Her strong role put her into a five-year contract with Samuel Z. Arkoff of American-International Pictures, and she became a leading lady in action films such as Jack Hill's Coffy and Foxy Brown, the comic strip character Friday Foster and William Girdler's 'Sheba, Baby'. She continued working with American-International, where she portrayed William Marshall's vampire victim in the Blacula sequel, Scream Blacula Scream. During the 1980s she became a regular on Miami Vice and played a supporting role as an evil witch in Ray Bradbury's and Walt Disney Pictures' Something Wicked This Way Comes, then returned to action as Steven Seagal's partner in Above the Law. In 1997, after the release of her film, Jackie Brown directed by Quentin Tarantino, Grier began her transition into television starting with the Showtime series Linc’s followed by a recurring role in Showtime series, the L Word, and most recently a main role in the ABC series, Bless this Mess.