Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman (April 30, 1926 – January 27, 2021) was an American actress and comedian whose career spanned 79 years. She received many accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, nine Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. She was known for her versatility and distinctive physicality, whereby she used props to accentuate and express her roles' characterizations.

Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, Leachman attended Northwestern University and began appearing in local plays as a teenager. After competing in the 1946 Miss America pageant, she secured a scholarship to study under Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York City, making her professional debut in 1948. In film, she appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971) as a neglected 1950s housewife who has an affair with a student of her husband, a high-school gym teacher; she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was part of Mel Brooks' ensemble cast, playing Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974), Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety (1977) and Madame Defarge in History of the World, Part I (1981).

Leachman won eight Primetime Emmy Awards from 22 nominations; she is tied with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jean Smart, and Allison Janney for the distinction of most acting Emmy Awards ever awarded to a performer. She won Emmys for her role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1975) and a Golden Globe for the spinoff Phyllis (1975–1977), in which she starred. She also appeared in the television film A Brand New Life (1973); A Girl Named Sooner (1975), in which she plays a reclusive, uneducated, and elderly bootlegger; the variety sketch show Cher (1975); the ABC Afterschool Special production The Woman Who Willed a Miracle (1983); and the television shows Promised Land (1998) and Malcolm in the Middle (2000–2006). Her other television credits include Gunsmoke (1961), Wagon Train (1962), The Virginian (1967), The Twilight Zone (1961; 2003) and Raising Hope (2010–2014). She also acted in the films Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), WUSA (1970), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980), Yesterday (1981), Castle in the Sky (1986), Spanglish (2004) and Mrs. Harris (2005). She became the oldest ever competitor on Dancing with the Stars (2008), and wrote her memoir Cloris: My Autobiography (2009).