Janet Leigh

Janet Leigh ( born July 6, 1927 in Merced, California, † October 3, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California; actually Jeanette Helen Morrison ) was an American actress. She is primarily known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Life and career

Leigh was born in Merced, the only child of Robert Morrison and Helen Lita Westergard. At the age of 20 she was discovered by actress Norma Shearer, whose husband Irving Thalberg worked in a senior position at the Metro -Goldwyn -Mayer Studios. Shearer showed a winter holiday Lew Wasserman, an acting agent, a photo of her, whereupon he Leigh took them under contract at MGM. Leigh ended prematurely because of her studies at the University of the Pacific in order to work as an actress.

Her most famous role was that of secretary Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. She was awarded a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. After the huge success of Psycho followed by roles in movies such as The Manchurian Candidate, in which she starred alongside Frank Sinatra, and John Carpenter's The Fog - The Fog on the side of her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis.

She also appeared in 1975 in an episode of Columbo starring role opposite Peter Falk. In Halloween: H20, the penultimate film in which she was involved before her death, she was once more on the side of her daughter Jamie Lee before the camera.

Leigh's third husband was the American actor Tony Curtis, with whom she was married from 1951 to 1962. Children from this marriage were Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. Curtis admitted that he had cheated Leigh and his then- movie colleague Christine Kaufmann, which led to divorce. 1962 married Janet Leigh her ​​fourth husband, Robert Brandt in Las Vegas, with whom she was married until her death.

In May 2004, Leigh received an honorary doctorate of the University of the Pacific has been awarded. She died six months later at the age of 77 years with her family to circulatory arrest.

Filmography (selection)

Works

• Janet Leigh: There Really Was a Hollywood. Doubleday, New York, 1984, ISBN 0-385-19035-2.
• Janet Leigh, Christopher Nickens: Psycho. Behind the scenes of Hitchcock's cult thriller. Heyne, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-453-10863-9.
• Janet Leigh: Dream Factory. Mira, Buffalo 2002, ISBN 1-551-66874-2.