Pamela Suzette Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress and singer. Described by Quentin Tarantino as cinema's first female action star (although, there are some who dispute that claim and believe Cheng Pei-pei actually holds that distinction), she achieved fame for her starring roles in a string of 1970s action, blaxploitation and women in prison films for American International Pictures and New World Pictures. Her accolades include nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award and a Saturn Award. Grier came to prominence with her titular roles in the films Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974); her other major films during this period included The Big Doll House (1971), Women in Cages (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972), Black Mama, White Mama (1973), Scream Blacula Scream (1973), The Arena (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975), Bucktown (1975) and Friday Foster (1975). She portrayed the title character in Tarantino's crime film Jackie Brown (1997), and also appeared in Escape from L.A. (1996), Jawbreaker (1999), Holy Smoke!, (1999), Bones (2001), Just Wright (2010), Larry Crowne (2011) and Poms (2019). On television, Grier portrayed Eleanor Winthrop in the Showtime comedy-drama series Linc's (1998–2000), Kate "Kit" Porter on the Showtime drama series The L Word (2004–2009), and Constance Terry in the ABC sitcom Bless This Mess (2019–2020). She received praise for her work in the animated series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1999). IndieWire named Grier one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. Grier was born on May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia ( Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier, Jr., who worked as a mechanic and technical sergeant in the United States Air Force. She has one sister and one brother. Grier said she is of mixed ancestry, namely of African American, Hispanic, Chinese, Filipino, and Cheyenne heritage. She was raised Catholic and later baptized as a Methodist. Because of her father's military career, the family moved frequently during Grier's childhood. In 1956, they relocated to Swindon in South West England, United Kingdom, where her father worked on an airforce base. By Grier's account, hers was one of the only black families in town, though she recalled that they faced no racism or segregation compared to that in the United States: "They didn’t care that I was black since they hadn’t been raised to hate blacks. Instead they’d been raised to hate Germans... In the U.S., especially in the South, we were never able to get buses to stop for us, we couldn’t eat in certain restaurants, couldn’t use certain bathrooms. Up until 1969, there were department stores in which my father and I weren’t even allowed to try on clothing." The family returned to the United States in 1958, when Grier's father was transferred to California's Travis Air Force Base, eventually settling in Denver, Colorado, near Lowry Air Force Base. Grier spent part of her upbringing on her maternal grandparents' sugar beet farm in rural Wyoming, where their ancestors had homesteaded after fleeing west via the Underground Railroad to escape slavery. Grier attended East High School in Denver, and appeared in a number of stage productions, as well as participating in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition at Metropolitan State College.