Tammy Lee Grimes is an American actress and singer. Grimes was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eola Willard , a naturalist and spiritualist, and Nicholas Luther Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended high school at the then-all girls school, Beaver Country Day School, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and then studied acting at New York City's prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse. Known for a self-created persona described as "a daffy but endearing pseudo-English eccentric" with a "slightly askew... accent that is two parts Grimesian British to one part British British" and a distinctive singing voice one critic called "a low, throaty quiver, a hum that takes wings", Grimes made her debut on the New York stage at the Neighborhood Playhouse in May 1955 in Jonah and the Whale. She made her Broadway stage debut as an understudy for Kim Stanley in the starring role in Bus Stop in June 1955.
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