Frances Lee McCain (born July 28, 1944), also known as Lee McCain, is an American actress.
Early life and education[]
McCain was born in San Diego, California and grew up in New York, Illinois, Colorado in addition to California. She graduated from Ripon College with a BA in Philosophy and then studied acting for 3 years at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. She completed a Master's degree in Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2000.
Acting career[]
She returned to New York where she appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's Play it Again Sam, and off-Broadway in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky, creating the role of Carol. She joined the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco under William Ball and played a variety of roles in repertory.
Apple's Way TV show (1974-75) and other 1970s work[]
She began her career in film and television after appearing opposite Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway in A Streetcar Named Desire, eventually co-starring with Ronny Cox as the female lead in her own television series, CBS-TV's Apple's Way in 1974. She appeared in a variety of television series and miniseries throughout the 1970s, including the Quincy ME episode Eye Of The Needle playing a Holistic practitioner. In 1978 she played Charles Grodin's wife in Albert Brooks' debut feature film, Real Life.
1980s acting work[]
In the 1980s, she was cast in several major films, usually always playing the mother of a main character. In 1984, she co-starred in the blockbuster film Gremlins as Lynn Peltzer, the mother of main character, Billy Peltzer (played by Zach Galligan). Also that year, she played Ethel McCormack, mother to Kevin Bacon's character, in Footloose. In 1985 she worked again with Steven Spielberg in Back to the Future as Stella Baines, the maternal grandmother of Marty McFly. In 1986, she played the role of Mrs. Lachance, the mother of Gordie Lachance (played by Wil Wheaton), in the hit drama film Stand by Me.
Later work[]
McCain continued to work in television after relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s and also appeared in Scream (1996) as the mother of Rose McGowan's character, and Patch Adams (1998).
She received a Master's Degree in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2000, and continues to work in Theater extensively in the San Francisco Area.
In 2004 McCain initiated a theater project based on oral histories of the blue collar workers responsible for the building and maintaining of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico which received workshop readings at the Lensic Center for Performing Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, most recently at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. McCain is an Associate Artist of the ZSpace Studio in San Francisco, and is an ensemble member of the AlterTheater Ensemble in San Rafael, California.