Lee Purcell

Lee Purcell is an American actress whose screen work was concentrated in the 1970s and 1980s. After moving to California in 1967 to study acting, she paid her bills with commercials and a job selling clothes at a disco. In 1969 Steve McQueen picked her from nearly 500 candidates for her first feature, Adam at Six A.M., opposite Michael Douglas. On television she appeared as Billie Dove in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) and as Olivia de Havilland in My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985). Purcell received two Emmy nominations, for lead actress in Long Road Home in 1991 and for a supporting performance in Secret Sins of the Father in 1994. She was co-producer and star of the 1998 cable movie Malaika, also titled Tons of Trouble. Her film credits dropped off after 1983, though she kept doing television projects.