Janet Leigh Biography

Actor

Name at birth: Jeanette Helen Morrison

Blonde, calmly beautiful and undeniably a grownup, Janet Leigh was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1950s. Leigh began making movies in 1947, and her 11-year marriage to actor Tony Curtis (1951-62) made them the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt of their day. Leigh made over fifty films, mostly light fare, but with a few notable dramatic exceptions: Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958), Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Her deadly shower scene in Psycho has long been considered a classic moment in American movies.

Extra credit: The Independent called Leigh the ingenue who "was married to Tony Curtis and murdered by Alfred Hitchcock"... Leigh and Curtis are the parents of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Janet Leigh co-stars with Kim Novak in our loop on Hitchcock's Blondes.