Lee Remick wants to live like the rest

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 14

Lee Remick wants to live like the rest

MARY KAYE

She did her best to look like an ordinary housewife . . . Lee Remick. pushing a trolley round the supermarket, wide blue eyes open for the best of the week's bargain buys. Bui, in a bright red blazer, cream shirt and beautifully cut grey trousers, bubbling blonde Lee looked so dazzling that everv head turned after her. And she didn’t really mind too much, she said. In London — where she lives now — she said: "People have much more respect for privacy' here than they do in the States. Over there it would be impossible to go out for a meal or go to the theatre or anywhere without being pestered. “Here, the occasional person will stop and say they liked a show, or something you did on television, but you don’t find yourself looking frantically around for tome way of escape."

Miss Remick, of course, played the unforgettable “Jennie” on television, which won her awards on both sides of the Atlantic. Since then she has started with Paul Scofield and Katherine Hepburn, made a psychological thriller alongside Gregory Peck, and has been appearing on the London stage, playing the Marilyn Monroe part in “Bus Stop”. Ironic, this latest role, for at one time in Hollywood they tried to label her as “the new Marilyn.” “They did that with every blue-eyed blonde,” she said. “They also tried to label me the new Grace Kelly. But I guess I finally managed to persuade them that I wasn’t the new anyone.” She is 38. but looks younger, and still has that clear, tresh-out-of-college healthy giow that is a hallmark of so many American girls. “My children,” (she has two from her first marriage. a daughter of 17, and a son three years

younger), “don’t seem to have any definite notions of what they want to be at the moment, so I’m happy just to let them go on absorbing as much education as possible. That way. they will be equipped for anything. “And if Kate. my daughter, trains for one of the professions, and then decides to give it al! up and have babies, I won’t mind. Because 1 er mind will be more disciplined. and better geared for it.” Her relationship with her children was “lovely,” she said. Since she married an assistant film director, Kip Gowans, in 1970, the children have lived in London and have gone to English schools. “I’ll let you into a secret. though,” said Lee Remick. “I think I must be married to the primmest example of male chauvinism that it s possible to find. “He doesn’t know how anything works in the kitchen: and sometimes, I tell him. I’m sure he doesn’t even know where the kitchen is.’ l