Pam Grier

Born: 26 May 1949
Where: Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The voluptuous black star originally made her name in the low-budget exploitation and Blaxploitation movies of the Seventies.

Grier burst on the scene as one of a bevy of sexy inmates harassed by a sadistic prison warden in The Big Doll House and followed with starring roles in Hit Man, Sheba Baby and Bucktown.

Her biggest hits of the 1970s, Coffy and Foxy Brown, cast her as a sexy nurse who goes after the junkies who turned her sister into an addict, and the drug ring that killed her lover.

She got into big budget productions with Fort Apache: The Bronx as a drug-crazed cop-killer, and Above the Law as Steven Seagal's detective partner.

Grier played a cyber substitute teacher in the sci-fi action flick Class of 1999 and a rock club hostess in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

Roles followed in Blaxpoitation spin-off Original Gangstas, John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. (as a transexual) and as Jim Brown's wife in Mars Attacks!.

The actress next landed her first leading role in over 20 years when Quentin Tarantino tailored his adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch for her with Jackie Brown with Grier as a flight attendant.

Grier was also cast in Bones a horror feature starring Snoop Doggy Dogg and most recently in Eddie Murphy's indifferent 2002 comedy The Adventures of Pluto Nash.