Kim Darby (born Deborah Zerby; July 8, 1947) is an American actress and teacher. Her breakout role was as Mattie Ross in the 1969 Western film True Grit, earning her a BAFTA Award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. The same year, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her performance in counterculture comedy Generation (1969).

Darby has appeared in over 80 films and television series. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Between 1992 and 2009, she taught acting in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her mother was a Hungarian immigrant from Budapest.

She performed as a singer and dancer under the name "Derby Zerby". Believing that she could not "hope for serious important roles in films with a name like "Derby Zerby", she renamed herself "Kim", because it was the name of a popular girl in her high school whom she admired, and "Darby", as a variation of "Derby".

Career

Film

Darby began acting at age 15; her first appearance was as a dancer in the feature film version of Bye Bye Birdie (1963), about a rock and roll music singing and guitar-playing star (modeled on the real-life career of Elvis Presley). Her television work included the Western TV series Gunsmoke of 1955–1975 (in the 1967 episodes "The Lure" and "Vengeance") and another long-running Western, Bonanza of 1959–1973 (in its 1967 episode "The Sure Thing"); and as a young girl approaching adulthood on an all-child planet in the 1966–67 first-season episode, "Miri", of the original Star Trek TV series of 1966–1969.

Among her many feature film roles, she is best known for her portrayal of Mattie Ross in the Western classic True Grit (1969), when she was 21 years old. Co-starring with John Wayne and Glen Campbell, she played a precocious, unusually confident 14-year-old Arkansas frontier girl pursuing the murderer who killed her beloved father. Set in the mid-1870s, the film was adapted from a popular Western novel published in 1968 by Charles Portis. It was hugely successful and reached number one at the box office in the US.

In 1970, Darby appeared in The Strawberry Statement and Norwood. She co-starred with Henry Winkler in The One and Only in 1978, and appeared in 1985's Better Off Dead, an absurdist comedy. A decade later, she played Laurie Strode's adoptive mother in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). She played the unhinged Virginia Calderwood in the first television miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man in 1976.

In 1990, she began to teach acting in the Los Angeles area and was an instructor in the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1992 to 2009. Darby also appeared in the 1999 The X-Files episode "Sein und Zeit" as a woman who confessed to the murder of her son, a boy who disappeared under circumstances similar to those being investigated by the lead characters, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. In 1970, she married James Westmoreland; the marriage ended in divorce after less than two months.

Filmography

Film

  • Bye Bye Birdie (1963) as Teenager (uncredited)
  • Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965) as Gussie
  • The Restless Ones (1965) as April
  • The Karate Killers (1967) as Sandy True
  • Flesh and Blood (1968) TV movie as Faye
  • True Grit (1969) as Mattie Ross
  • Generation (1969) as Doris Bolton Owen
  • The Strawberry Statement (1970) as Linda
  • Norwood (1970) as Rita Lee Chipman
  • A Glimpse of Tiger (1971, abandoned)
  • Red Sky at Morning (1971) (uncredited)
  • The Grissom Gang (1971) as Barbara Blandish
  • The People (1972 TV movie) as Melodye Amerson
  • Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973 TV movie) as Sally Farnham
  • The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd (1974 TV movie) as Ruby Hardgrave
  • This Is the West That Was (1974 TV movie) as Calamity Jane
  • The One and Only (1978) as Mary Crawford
  • Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers (1979 TV movie) as Sweetiepie
  • Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb (1980 TV movie) as Lucy Tibbets
  • The Capture of Grizzly Adams (1982 TV movie) as Kate Bradey
  • Summer Girl (1983 TV movie) as Mary Shelburne
  • First Steps (1985 TV movie) as Sherry Petrofsky
  • Embassy (1985) TV movie as Sue Davidson
  • Better Off Dead (1985) as Jenny Meyer
  • Teen Wolf Too (1987) as Professor Brooks
  • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) as Debra Strode
  • The Last Best Sunday (1999) as Mrs. Summers
  • Newsbreak (2000) as Frances Johnson
  • Mockingbird Don't Sing (2001) as Louise Standon
  • You Are So Going to Hell! (2004) as Louise
  • Dead Letters (2007) as Barbs
  • The Evil Within (2017) as Mildy Torres

TV appearances

  • Mr. Novak (1963, 1965)
  • Dr. Kildare (1964); Episode: "A Nickel's Worth of Prayer" as Patsy
  • Wagon Train (1964); Season 8, Episode 13: "The Hector Heatherton Story" as Heather Heatherton
  • Run for Your Life (1966); Episode: "Hang Down Your Head and Laugh"
  • The Fugitive

(1965); Episode: “An Apple A Day”

(1966); Episode: "Joshua's Kingdom"

  • Star Trek: The Original Series (1966) – Miri in S1:E8, "Miri"
  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1967); Episode: "The Five Daughters Affair"
  • Ironside (1967); pilot film for the NBC series of the same name
  • Bonanza (1967); Episode: "The Sure Thing"
  • Gunsmoke (1967); Season 12, Episode 23: "The Lure" as Carrie Neely
  • Gunsmoke (1967); Season 13, Episodes 4 & 5: "Vengeance, Part 1 & 2" as Angel with James Stacy
  • The Streets of San Francisco (1972); pilot for the TV series of the same name
  • Circle of Fear (1973); Episode: "Dark Vengeance"
  • Love Story (1973); Episode: "Joie"
  • Police Story (1974); Episodes: "Captain Hook" & "Wyatt Earp Syndrome"
  • Thriller (1975); Series 5, Episode 5: "Good Salary - Prospects - Free Coffin" as Helen
  • Rich Man, Poor Man (1976); Miniseries
  • Family (1978); Episode: "Princess in the Tower" as Lily Barker
  • The Last Convertible (1979); Miniseries
  • The Love Boat (1979, 1982)
  • Fantasy Island (1982); Episode: "The Challenge / A Genie Named Joe"
  • The Facts of Life (1984); Episode: "Joint Custody" as Doris Garrett
  • Murder, She Wrote (1984) Episode: "We're Off to Kill the Wizard" & (1995) Episode: "Film Flam"
  • Scarecrow & Mrs. King (1985) Episode: "Over the Limit"
  • The X-Files (1999); Episode: "Sein und Zeit"
  • Becker (1999); Episode: "Point of Contact"
  • Perception (2014); Episode: "Prologue"

References

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