Pam Grier's Real Name: Pamela Suzette Grier

Quick answer: The actor is known professionally as Pam Grier. Encyclopaedia Britannica lists her in full as Pamela Suzette Grier, born May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A Denver Public Library biography independently records the same full name, date, and birthplace.

Real name and early life

Britannica lists her in full as Pamela Suzette Grier, born May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Denver Public Library independently says Pamela Suzette Grier was born May 26, 1949, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Gwendolyn and Clarence Grier. Britannica says she grew up in Colorado and spent a couple of years with her family in Swindon, England, that her mother was a nurse and her father was a U.S. Air Force officer, and that after her parents divorced when she was 13 her mother raised her. The Denver biography independently says her father served in the Air Force, that the family was sent to England for a couple of years and returned to Denver in 1958, that her mother worked as a nurse, and that her parents divorced when she was 13. It does not use the more specific Swindon wording. The Denver account also says she finished high school at East High in Denver and later competed in the Miss Colorado Universe competition to help pay her way through Metropolitan State College of Denver. Britannica says that while working as a receptionist at a radio station in Denver at age 18, she won a beauty contest, attended Metropolitan State College of Denver, and later went to film school at UCLA.

Career highlights

The Denver biography says a talent agent saw her at the Miss Colorado Universe competition and signed her in Los Angeles, and that she was later discovered by the producer Roger Corman and flown to the Philippines to film an action movie, becoming an action star in 1970s blaxploitation films. Britannica independently says she came to fame in the 1970s in films such as Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), and Sheba, Baby (1975), and later had a career resurgence in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997). Britannica also names later work including Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), a recurring role on The L Word (2004–2009), and the 2010 autobiography Foxy: My Life in Three Acts. The Denver biography does not name those later titles, but it does record that in 1998 Denver Mayor Wellington Webb declared October 13 "Pam Grier Day."

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Pam Grier or Pamela Suzette Grier are looking for the same actor.