Cloris Leachman Biography

Character actress Cloris Leachman won nine Emmy Awards plus an Oscar in her 60+ years of work in television and films. An actress of remarkable range, she played both winsome dramatic leads and unpredictable, smart-mouthed old dames.

Cloris Leachman grew up in Iowa and attended Northwestern University, winning the 1946 Miss Chicago contest (and in that role, taking part in the Miss America contest) while she was there. She 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).

Leachman’s 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). (Leachman once described the character’s personality as “the sure firm touch on the wrong note.”) In those same years she won an Oscar as best supporting actress for her turn as the lovelorn wife of a small-town coach 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.

Leachman 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 show’s oldest contestant to that time. Her last major film role was as the grandmother of a struggling young drag queen in the family drama Jump, Darling (2020).