Lee Purcell (born Lee Jeune Williams; June 15, 1947) is an American actress who worked primarily in the 1970s and 1980s.

Early life

Purcell was born Lee Jeune Williams at the

Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point or MCAS Cherry Point (*) is a United States Marine Corps airfield located in Havelock, North Carolina, United States, in the eastern part of the state. It was built in 1941, and was commissioned in 1942 and ...

(North Carolina), the elder daughter of Major Frank D. Williams Jr., a highly decorated Marine Corps pilot who was killed while on active duty when she was a child. Her mother, Lee ( McKnight) Williams (1925-2014), remarried, to Dr. Donald I. "Don" Purcell, a U.S. Navy doctor assigned to the Marine Corps. Lee Purcell has a younger sister, Paige Wooldridge. She graduated from Paragould High School in 1965 and briefly attended

Stephens College Stephens College is a private women's college in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second-oldest women's educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833, as the Columbia Female Acad ...

Columbia, Missouri Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is the county seat of Boone County and home to the University of Missouri. Founded in 1821, it is the principal city of the five-county Columbia metropolitan area. It is Missouri's fourt ...

as a dance and theatre student until she was expelled.Columbia Missourian November 26, 1972 "Success for Lee Purcell"
cdm.sos.mo.gov; accessed June 14, 2015.

Career

After being expelled from Stephens College, Purcell arrived in California in 1967 and studied acting. Casting off her southern accent was another goal she successfully worked on. Purcell supported herself by working in commercials and selling clothes at a disco.Profile
Daily News (Bowling Green, KY), May 8, 1981. In 1969, Purcell was personally chosen for her first feature film by

Steve McQueen Terrence Stephen McQueen (March 24, 1930November 7, 1980) was an American actor. His antihero persona, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw for his films of the late 1950s, 1960s, and ...

in his company's production of ''

Adam at Six A.M. ''Adam at 6 A.M.'' is a 1970 American drama film directed by Robert Scheerer. It stars Michael Douglas, Lee Purcell, Joe Don Baker, Louise Latham, Charles Aidman, Grayson Hall, Marge Redmond, and Dana Elcar. The film did not receive much atte ...

'', co-starring

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

. Asked to explain why he picked Purcell among nearly 500 other available actresses, McQueen said, "It wasn't easy. We kept narrowing down the field over a period of weeks until it came to giving screen tests to six of them. All of them were good, but Lee seemed to jump right out of the screen." Lee Purcell at Emmy Awards 1994

Her television work included roles as Billie Dove and

Olivia de Havilland Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland (; July 1, 1916July 26, 2020) was a British-American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. ...

in two biopic TV movies: ''

The Amazing Howard Hughes ''The Amazing Howard Hughes'' is a 1977 American made-for-television biographical film about American aviation pioneer and filmmaker Howard Hughes, based on the book ''Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes'' by Hughes' business partner Noah Dietrich. Th ...

'' (1977) and '' My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn'' (1985). She was nominated for two

Emmy Awards The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

. In 1991, she was nominated as Outstanding Lead Actress for ''Long Road Home''. and in 1994 as Outstanding Supporting Actress for ''Secret Sins of the Father''. She was co-producer, and starred in the 1998 low-budget cable-TV movie ''Malaika'' (alternate title ''Tons of Trouble''). Purcell's film career wound down in 1983 and she has only had five motion picture credits since, the last in 2015. She has continued to do television projects. She also continues to stay active by performing narrations of poetry and fiction in front of live audiences.

Personal life

In December 2010 Purcell launched an interactive fashion and beauty website, BoomerBabes, geared towards

Baby Boomer Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. ...

women born between 1946 and 1964. The website did not gain any visitors and BoomerBabes stopped updating in 2014.

Filmography

Feature films

Television

Special projects

References

External links

* *
Fashion and beauty website created by Purcell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Purcell, Lee 1947 births Living people 20th-century American actresses 21st-century American actresses Actresses from Arkansas Actresses from North Carolina American film actresses American Scientologists American television actresses People from Cherry Point, North Carolina People from Paragould, Arkansas Stephens College alumni