Personal info
Known for
Actor
Gender
Female
Date of Birth
1922-11-12
Location
Michigan, United States
Edit pageKim Hunter
Biography
Kim Hunter (born Janet Cole; November 12, 1922 – September 11, 2002) was an American theatre, film, and television actress. She achieved prominence for portraying Stella Kowalski in the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which she reprised for the 1951 film adaptation, and won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Decades later, she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for portraying Nola Madison on the soap opera The Edge of Night. She also portrayed the chimpanzee Zira in Planet of the Apes (1968), and its sequels Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971).
Hunter was married twice, first to William Baldwin, a Marine Corps pilot, in 1944. The couple had a daughter, Kathryn Deirdre (b. 1944), before divorcing two years later. She wed Robert Emmett in 1951. They had a son, Sean Robert, in 1954. Hunter and Emmett would occasionally perform together in stage plays; he died in 2000.
Hunter was a lifelong progressive Democrat. She died in New York City on September 11, 2002, of a heart attack at the age of 79. Her ashes were given to her daughter—an attorney, civic leader, and former judge in Connecticut—after cremation.
Hunter received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 1615 Vine Street and a second for television at 1715 Vine Street.
