Lee Grant (born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal; October 31, during the mid-1920s) is an American actress, documentarian, and director. In a career spanning over seven decades, she won an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Directors Guild of America Award, in addition to nominations for five Golden Globe Awards. She is one of the last surviving actors of the Hollywood blacklist era.

Grant began her career on Broadway, making her debut in Detective Story (1949) as the Shoplifter. She reprised the role in the film adaptation (1951), earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. Her career was interrupted when she was blacklisted for 12 years after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. During this period, she worked as an acting teacher and took minor television and theater roles under pseudonyms.

Grant returned to prominence with her role in the television series Peyton Place (1965–1966), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama Series. She appeared in supporting roles in In the Heat of the Night, Valley of the Dolls (both 1967), and The Landlord (1970), receiving Academy Award nominations for the latter, as well as Shampoo (1975) and Voyage of the Damned (1976), winning for Shampoo.

Grant transitioned to directing in the 1980s, focusing on documentaries and television films. She won the Directors Guild of America Award for Nobody’s Child (1986) while her film Down and Out in America (1986) tied for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making her the only Academy Award-winning actor to direct an Academy Award-winning documentary. She continued directing into the 2000s while occasionally making acting appearances.

Lee Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal in Manhattan, the only child of Witia (née Haskell), a child care worker, and Abraham W. Rosenthal, a realtor and educator. Her father was born in New York City, to Polish Jewish immigrants, and her mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant who, along with her sister Fremo, left Odessa to escape the pogroms. The family resided at 148th Street and Riverside in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

Her birthday is October 31, but the year is disputed, with all years ranging from 1925 to 1931 having been given as her year of birth at some point; however, census data, travel manifests, and testimony suggest that she was born in 1925 or 1926, while Grant's stated ages at the time of her professional debut and Oscar nomination indicate she was born in 1927.

Grant made her stage debut in L'Oracolo at the Metropolitan Opera in 1931 and later joined the American Ballet as an adolescent. She attended Art Students League of New York, Juilliard School of Music, The High School of Music & Art, and George Washington High School, all in New York City. Grant graduated from high school and won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where she studied under Sanford Meisner. Grant undertook further study with Uta Hagen at the HB Studio. She later enrolled in the Actors Studio in New York.

Grant had her first stage ballet performance in 1933 at the Metropolitan Opera House. In 1938, in her early teens, she was made a member of the American Ballet under George Balanchine. As an actress, Grant had her professional stage debut as understudy in Oklahoma! in 1944. In 1948, she had her Broadway acting debut in Joy to the World. Grant established herself as a dramatic method actress on and off Broadway, earning praise for her first major role as a shoplifter in Detective Story in 1949.