Pam Grier

American actress known in the early 1970s for starring in a string of 1970s women in prison and blaxploitation films such as The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba, Baby. She starred in Quentin Tarantino's 1997 crime film Jackie Brown, for which she received a Satellite Award and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for a SAG Award. For six seasons, Grier portrayed Kate "Kit" Porter on the Showtime television series The L Word, which ran from 2004. She received an Emmy nomination for her work in the animated program Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Tarantino said that she may have been cinema's first female action star. Grier has had a few high profile relationships; with basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before he became a Muslim, troubled comedian Freddie Prinze, comedian Richard Pryor from whom she contracted a "buildup of cocaine residue" in her body, Soul Train host Don Cornelius, basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, music executive Kevin Evans, and marketing executive Peter Hempel. Grier was diagnosed with stage-four cervical cancer in 1988, and was told she had 18 months to live. Through vigorous treatment she made a recovery and has been in remission. Link to Wikipedia biography