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Pam Grier

Pamgrier

Miami Vice Character
Born
May 26, 1949, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Active
1970-present


Pamela Suzette "Pam" Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress. She appeared in the show Miami Vice as Valerie Gordon, a NYPD Detective and on-again, off-again love of Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs in the episodes "Rites of Passage", "The Prodigal Son", and "Too Much, Too Late".

Early Life/Career[]

Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, daughter of a nurse and an Air Force Sergeant. After moving around the world, Grier's family finally settled in Denver, Colorado, where Pam appeared in several plays while in high school. In 1967, Grier moved to Los Angeles and worked for American International Pictures (AIP) as a receptionist. In 1970 she made her film debut in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, then was cast in a series of "women-in-jail" movies such as The Big Doll House, Women In Cages and The Big Bird Cage, then went into the early 1970s "blaxplotation" movies, such as Cool Breeze (with Margaret Avery), Coffy, Friday Foster (with Eartha Kitt), and her most famous role as Foxy Brown (with Antonio Fargas). She became known as the first African-American woman to be the lead in an action movie with that role. She would try to shake the "blaxplotation" tag with appearances on television, the first one being in Roots: The Next Generation (with Georg Stanford Brown), The Love Boat, Night Court (episode with Alix Elias), The Cosby Show, Crime Story (with Dennis Farina), Knots Landing (with Larry Riley), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (with Richard Belzer) and many others, including her latest roles on The L Word, Smallville, the TV movie Cleveland Abduction (with Joe Morton), and in a 2018 episode of This is Us. She continues to appear in movies as well, including a return to her "Foxy Brown" type persona in Jackie Brown, appearing with Ving Rhames in the 2012 movie Mafia, and her most recent movie appearance, in 2017's Being Rose.

Personal life[]

Grier has never married, though she has been romantically linked to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Richard Pryor, and Freddie Prinze in the 1970s. Grier's cousin is former Los Angeles Rams football player Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier. Coincidentally, Grier's birthday is identical to her Vice love interest, Philip Michael Thomas.

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