Pam Grier has been a major African American actress from the early seventies. Her career started back in 1971 when Roger Corman of New World Pictures launched her into "The Big Doll House" (1971), about a woman's penitentiary and "The Big Bird Cage" (1972). Her strong role put her into a five year contract with Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures and from then Grier became a leading lady in action films such as two of the Jack Hill films: "Coffy" (1973) and "Foxy Brown" (1974), and the comic strip character "Friday Foster" (1975) and the William Girdler film "Sheba, Baby" (1975). Pam continued work with American International where she portrayed William Marshall's vampire victim in the 'Blacula' sequel, "Scream Blacula Scream" (1973).
During the eighties Grier became a regular on "Miami Vice" (1984) and played a supporting role as an evil witch in Ray Bradbury's and Walt Disney Pictures "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (1983) and then returned to action as Steven Seagal's partner in "Above the Law" (1988). Her most famous role of the 90s was probably "Jackie Brown" (1997), directed by Quentin Tarantino, which was a homage to her earlier 70s action roles, but she occasionally did supporting roles as in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" (1996), "In Too Deep" (1999) and her funny performance in "Jawbreaker" (1999). More recently, she appeared in John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars" (2001) and co-starred with Snoop Dogg in "Bones" (2001). Her entire career of over thirty years has brought only success for this beautiful and talented actress.
