"Pam Grier was white America's first opportunity to get an eyeful of a really fine black woman without having to listen to her sing, thus empowering millions of us to ignore Destiny's Child. If you don't appreciate the importance of that I guess you weren't around back in the Lena Horne Era. You never heard Pam Grier wail about no 'Stormy Weather'. If it was raining outside that meant it was time for Pam to put on her baddest pair of rainboots and go out there and kick that weatherman's white ass."
— John Saleeby
, Interesting Motherfuckers
, Interesting MotherfuckersPamela Suzette Grier (born May 26, 1949 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) is an American actress, known for being probably cinema's first Action Girl. Any time you see a woman kicking ass in movies, you can thank her. She was voted the second greatest such actress of all time by Rotten Tomatoes (behind Michelle Yeoh).
In the 1970s Grier was an icon of Blaxploitation movies and many of her best-known films belong to that genre. It came as no surprise that she starred in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 homage to Blaxploitation, Jackie Brown.
Notable roles include:
Films:
- Women In Cages
- Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (an extra)
- The Big Doll House
- The Big Bird Cage
- Black Mama, White Mama
- Coffy
- Scream Blacula Scream
- Hit Mannote
- Foxy Brown
- Sheba, Baby
- Bucktown
- Friday Foster
- Fort Apache, The Bronx
- Something Wicked This Way Comes
- The Vindicator
- Above the Law (1988)
- Class of 1999
- Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
- Escape from L.A.
- Mars Attacks!
- Jackie Brown
- Snow Day
- Ghosts of Mars
- Bones (2001)
- The Adventures of Pluto Nash
- Larry Crowne
- The Man with the Iron Fists
TV series:
- Miami Vice
- Crime Story
- The L Word
- Smallville (As Amanda Waller)
- Bless This Mess
Video games:
Tropes associated with this actress:
- Action Girl: Before Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor codified this trope in movies, Pam Grier pretty much defined it.
- Afro Asskicker: She may very well be the Trope Codifier.
- And Starring: The L Word put its actors' names in the credits in strict alphabetical order... with the exception of the final name: "and Pam Grier as Kit". It presumably helped that Jennifer Beals, its other big-name star, has a name early on in the alphabet.
- Black Jezebel Stereotype: She is known for playing characters that update the trope, mixing it with some of the no-nonsense and stubborn traits of the Sassy Black Woman.
- Foxy Brown: On the one hand, Foxy Brown has the motive of enacting brutal revenge for the murder of her boyfriend and takes on a drug syndicate single-handedly. On the other hand, her fight scenes are filmed with gratuitous Male Gaze, with Foxy receiving sexualized Clothing Damage. Even scenes of Foxy being brutalized were sexualized to such an extent that critics described it as borderline soft-pornographic.
- Coffy: Similar to Foxy Brown, Coffy is a woman on a revenge mission, this time against those who enabled her sister's heroin addiction. She's a Heroic Seductress who disguises herself as a call girl to Honey Trap her primary target. These scenes also deploy a Male Gaze perspective that highlight Grier's sex appeal. The tagline for the film highlights the Interplay of Sex and Violence: "They call her 'Coffy' and she'll cream you!"
- Blaxploitation: She and Tamara Dobson became the genre's leading actresses.
- B-Movie: Grier is actually not a bad actress, so it's unfortunate that she has mostly starred in B-movies, except for Jackie Brown.
- Ms. Fanservice: Especially in her early films, she spent a lot of time wearing lingerie, Stripperiffic clothes or no clothes at all.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis: To many people it may seem as if she only made blaxploitation movies, which isn't true. Younger generations may only know her from appearing in Jackie Brown.
- Sassy Black Woman: A common characteristic of most of her parts.
- Silk Hiding Steel: As a trailer for Foxy Brown has it, "She's brown sugar with a touch of spice... and murder if you don't treat her nice."
- Soul Sista: Would you expect anything else when Hollywood's first Action Girl is an African-American woman?
- Took the Bad Film Seriously: A rare positive example. She invoked this regarding her Girls Behind Bars films."They were my sounding board, where I really learned filmmaking. I was working for Roger Corman... and making $500 a day. I was green; I was hungry. These were my first roles so I made them as close to Shakespeare as possible. That's how I approached it and it got me work. The characters stood out. I got recognized."
- The X of Y: The first episode of the YouTube series Missing Reel was titled "Blaxploitation," and ended by talking about Jackie Brown and called her "The Queen of Badass."
