Cloris Leachman - first film role - Kiss Me Deadly 1955

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 the neglected wife of a closeted schoolteacher in the 1950s; 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's ensemble cast, playing Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974) and Madame Defarge in History of the World, Part I (1981).

Leachman won additional Emmys for her role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show; television film A Brand New Life (1973); 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 (2000–06).[1] Her other television credits include Gunsmoke (1961), 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), Yesterday (1981), Castle in the Sky (1998), Spanglish (2004), and Mrs. Harris (2005). She wrote her memoir Cloris: My Autobiography (2009).