Lesley Ann Warren

Birthday: 16 August 1946, New York City, New York, USA

Height: 173 cm

Lesley Ann Warren started gearing towards a life in show business right off the bat as a child ballerina; little did she know that Hollywood stardom would arrive on her doorstep in the form of a "Cinderella" story -- literally! The New York-born actress (born in 1946) is the daughter of a night club singer, Margot Warren (née Verblow), and a real estate agent, William Warren. Her parents were of Russian Jewish descent. Warren's mother gave up her own entertainment career for marriage and family. Lesley attended New York's Professional Children's School and eventually studied under Lee Strasberg at his Actors Studio, the youngest student to be accepted at the time (age 17). The freckled, talented hopeful gathered musical stage experience in such shows as "Bye Bye Birdie" playing swooning teen Kim McAfee. She made her illustrious Broadway debut in "110 in the Shade", the 1963 musical version of "The Rainmaker," and won the "Most Promising Newcomer" Award. She subsequently received the Theatre World Award for her work in the 1965 tunefest "Drat! The Cat!" The attention she received immediately led to her capturing the beguiling title role in the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV musical production of Cinderella (1965). Although sweet-voiced stardom was certainly hers on a silver platter, she didn't necessarily carry the sweet tooth for it. Her impact as Cinderella led to her signing with the Walt Disney Studio as their principal ingénue. Co-starring in the rather blah musical showcases The Happiest Millionaire (1967) and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968) further convinced her that she needed to nip the saccharine stereotype in the bud if she was to grow as an actress and sustain some type of career longevity. Rebelling against her studio-imposed image, she left Disney determined to pursue roles with more depth, drama and character. Changing her name temporarily to "Lesley Warren" to reinforce her goal, she replaced Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage series Mission: Impossible (1966) in 1970, but the audiences were quite cool in their reception to the "new and improved" Lesley and didn't buy her as a femme-fatale replacement for the cool and aloof Ms. Bain. After only one season, she left the show and sought greener pastures in the TV mini-movie market playing a wide range of vulnerable neurotics as well as sexy, worldly ladies. She made her mark in such sudsy 1970s material as Love Hate Love (1971) co-starring 'Ryan O'Neal (I)'; The Legend of Valentino (1975); the rags-to-riches story Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue (1977), for which she won a Golden Globe award; the epic WWII story Pearl (1978); Betrayal (1978); and Portrait of a Stripper (1979). In the early 1980s, Lesley's movie career resurrected itself with a priceless performance as kingpin James Garner's whiny-voiced, peroxide-blonde spitfire Norma Cassady in the musical film slapstick Victor Victoria (1982). The role won her nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, as well as winning a New York Film Critics Award and a People's Choice Award. This scene-stealing turn led to a couple of other quality offbeat films: Choose Me (1984) and Songwriter (1984), along with the usual quota of TV projects. Warren received nominations for a Golden Globe for Songwriter, and a People's Choice Award for Choose Me. She also matured into a steamy, sexier "older woman" type and earned some worldly roles opposite various gorgeous young guns, including Christopher Atkins in the critically-drubbed A Night in Heaven (1983). Her riotous "dumb blonde" act had Hollywood discovering her potential as a scatter-brained comedienne, an image she has reinforced over the years with recurring TV guest parts on such popular shows as Will & Grace (1998) and Desperate Housewives (2004). Warren's television credits also include a Golden Globe Award performance for Best Actress in the miniseries 79 Park Avenue. She also was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her role in the CBS miniseries Family of Spies. Warren received a Cable Ace nomination for her work in Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. She also received Cable Ace and Golden Globe nominations for her work in HBO Pictures' Baja Oklahoma. Further television credits include leading roles in the NBC telefilm Evergreen, and the Emmy winning TNT miniseries Joseph (opposite Ben Kingsley). Warren appeared on five seasons of the USA Network drama In Plain Sight, as well as the 100th episode of Psych, a tribute to the movie Clue. Warren recently appeared in three films: Babysitter, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, and Michael co-starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto. From Cinderella to sexy mamas, the effervescent Lesley is still going strong in a career now hitting four-and-a-half decades. Lesley has a son, Christopher Peters, from her 1967-1977 union to makeup artist/hair stylist-cum-film producer Jon Peters. Since 2000, she has been married to advertising exec Ronald Taft, a former v.p. at Columbia and sometime actor. Show less «

Your best is good enough. The only one you have to please is yourself.

Trust your own instincts, go inside, follow your heart. Right from the start. go ahead and stand up ...Show more »

Trust your own instincts, go inside, follow your heart. Right from the start. go ahead and stand up for what you believe in. As I've learned, that's the path to happiness. Show less «

I've been a character actress right from the beginning. I was no more like Cinderella in my real lif...Show more »

I've been a character actress right from the beginning. I was no more like Cinderella in my real life than I was like the neurotic poet in Cop (1988). Age has nothing to do with being the kind of actress who relies not on magnetic personality, but on disappearing into the person you're playing instead. For my money, Michelle Pfeiffer's a character actress--it's got nothing to do with looks, or age, or whether it's the leading role. Show less «

When I was a young girl, I had really long hair and I went to Jon Peters for the first time. He cut ...Show more »

When I was a young girl, I had really long hair and I went to Jon Peters for the first time. He cut my hair within an inch of its life. I was traumatized! Show less «

[on The Happiest Millionaire (1967))] I was a baby; I think I was 18, or maybe 18 and a half. I had ...Show more »

[on The Happiest Millionaire (1967))] I was a baby; I think I was 18, or maybe 18 and a half. I had just done Cinderella (1965), and I was touring a Broadway show. I had been asked to come out and do a screen test, which, in those days, was a real screen test. They put me up at the Beverly Hills Hotel for two weeks. I had rehearsals, I had to do costume fittings and hair consultations and makeup, etc. Then at the end, you do this full on-screen test, with dance numbers and musical numbers and acting scenes in costume. Getting that job, that wonderful role and incredible experience, was just a huge accomplishment for me. I got to know Walt Disney; he was very much present. This is a man who knew what hair ribbon I was wearing, as well as what they were serving at the commissary, as well as what the animators were doing. He was a genius, and he had such vision, such a hands-on approach to everything. So to be picked by him was such an unbelievable honor for me. Show less «

[reflecting on her career] I have come far, but not far enough. It is still a man's world.

[on Color of Night (1994)] That was a real heartbreaker. My participation was mostly in the scenes w...Show more »

[on Color of Night (1994)] That was a real heartbreaker. My participation was mostly in the scenes with the therapy group, and each of us was supposed to have had a relationship with the Jane March character. Our director, Richard Rush, struggled with what went on between Bruce Willis' character and Jane March's character, and how he had envisioned that to go. It was a tough film--it was tense, it was difficult. I think Jane was only 21. Even though she had done L'amant (1992), she was a young, young, young girl, and she had a lot of anxiety about doing all that nudity and all that erotic stuff. Even though she knew what she had signed on to do, it doesn't matter; somehow when you get to the point where you have to do it, it's a different experience. I remember one night when we were shooting our little love scene in somebody's house, and we were upstairs, shooting past the allotted time that the city had allowed us to shoot. I don't remember what that was, maybe 10 or 11. The police were called, and the crew just said, "Keep shooting, keep shooting! Keep kissing her, keep kissing her!" We're half-undressed, with these police officers coming up the stairs. "Keep shooting! Keep shooting!" It was a little crazy-making for sure, but exciting in a way. All the characters were so intense and neurotic in their own issues, and it was fraught with a lot of high anxiety just because of its material. Show less «

[on landing Victor Victoria (1982)] I had my hair in braids and a baseball cap on and my agent at th...Show more »

[on landing Victor Victoria (1982)] I had my hair in braids and a baseball cap on and my agent at the time,Ron Meyer--who's now the head of Universal--called me and said, "You have to go in and meet Blake Edwards," and I said, "I can't! I have no makeup on." He said, "You have to. He's leaving for London tomorrow, you have to go meet him." So I went in, and we sat and talked for about 15 minutes, had a lot of laughs, and then he just said, "Do you want to do this role?" And I had not read the script, but I had seen Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) 11 times, and I had seen Pink Panther, and Days of Wine and Roses (1962) is a genius movie, so I said, "Yes, I want to work with you on whatever." And then I went home and read the script, and in the script Norma wasn't blonde, didn't have an accent and didn't have a dance number or a musical number. She was pretty much a classic chorine of the time. So I started to think about what I wanted to do with this role, and I made up this whole history for her. She grew up on the Lower East Side in a family of 14, and she had to yell to be heard. She worked at Woolworth's and read the movie magazines and wanted to look like Jean Harlow. I created this character in my head, and then I called Blake--he was already in London--and he said, "Yes." He sent his hair and makeup people and the costume designer, Patricia Norris, over to my house, and we created this character. When I walked on the set in hair and makeup for the first time, I thought, "I'm either going to be fired, or he's gonna love it," and luckily for me, he loved it. For me, she was very real. That's why I did that fabricated history, to fool myself, so she was a real person and had a real background and real reasons why she behaved the way she did. It was all for me. I know that some people work differently, but I have to work from the inside out. It doesn't matter how big the character is, there has to be a truthful core. And that's how I was taught; I studied with Lee Strasberg in New York, and he was my teacher for ten years, so that's how I was trained, and that's what I know. On top of that, if you have comedic sensibilities, you intuitively know how to bring that forward on top of a real person. What Blake would do a lot with me was, he would let the cameras roll and I would improvise, so a lot of what's in the movie is improvised. But I couldn't do that improvisation successfully if I didn't know who she was on the inside, operating from a real core. Show less «

Good work is good work wherever it is.

[on making Songwriter (1984)] What happened on "Songwriter" was that I was doing that movie, but wit...Show more »

[on making Songwriter (1984)] What happened on "Songwriter" was that I was doing that movie, but with a different director. Sydney Pollack was producing, and I remember a week into shooting, I got a call from Sydney, and I thought, "Oh no. Oh dear." He said, "I want to tell you that we're replacing the director," and I said, "You're kidding, why?" He said, "They weren't happy with the way things look." I said, "Well, why not replace the cinematographer if you're not happy with how it looks?" He said, "Trust me, just trust me," and I said, "Well, who's directing?" And he said, "You'll see, you'll see . . . " And he surprised me with Alan Rudolph. It was really interesting, because from the first day of Alan's dailies, they looked extraordinary. So it's interesting how much impact a director will have on a cinematographer and the look of a film. It's definitely a collaborative situation . . . I was terrified, terrified in "Songwriter", because there I was, New York Jewish girl, singing country-western onstage with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. I mean, forget it. I was so terrified. Alan was amazing. He just kind of hand-held me during that entire experience. Show less «

When I went to do Joseph (1995), it was working with Ben Kingsley that reignited in me my passion fo...Show more »

When I went to do Joseph (1995), it was working with Ben Kingsley that reignited in me my passion for acting. He was so dedicated and so impassioned himself, that it reignited that in me. That was a tremendous blessing. Show less «

The truth is, I would do anything for Alan Rudolph. If he asked me to stand on my head and spit wood...Show more »

The truth is, I would do anything for Alan Rudolph. If he asked me to stand on my head and spit wooden nickels, I would. I love him. I loved working with him. I did two movies before with him [Choose Me (1984) and Songwriter (1984)], and they were some of the highlights of my working life. He's just an inspired guy and a great person to work with. Show less «

I find that there are more interesting roles for women my age in the independent world, which is not...Show more »

I find that there are more interesting roles for women my age in the independent world, which is not to say that there aren't phenomenal roles in studio films, but 99% of the time they go to Meryl Streep or a very short list of women. Very short. And because they want to work as well as we all do, they take them. So now there's not a lot left over. Show less «

Lesley Ann Warren

Lesley Ann Warren's FILMOGRAPHY

Lesley Ann Warren'S roles

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