Jennifer Grant

Jennifer Grant was born on February 26, 1966, in Los Angeles, the only child of Cary Grant and his fourth wife, actress Dyan Cannon. Grant was sixty-two years old at her birth, and her arrival was widely reported as a turning point that led him to step back from film acting; his final theatrical film, Walk, Don't Run, had been released the previous year. She was raised primarily by her mother following Cannon and Grant's divorce in 1968, though Grant remained closely involved in her upbringing and, in later interviews and in her own writing, described his devotion to fatherhood as the defining commitment of his later life. Jennifer Grant studied at Stanford University, where she read philosophy, and worked for a period as an actress, appearing in television and film roles under her own name. In 2011 she published Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, a memoir centered on her relationship with her father rather than a comprehensive biography of his career. The book, published by Knopf, drew on personal letters, notes, and recollections, and was widely reviewed, including in The New York Times, as an intimate corrective to the more sensationalized accounts of Grant's private life that had circulated after his 1986 death. Jennifer Grant has remained a public custodian of her father's legacy in the decades since, participating in documentaries, archival projects, and public commemorations of his centenary and career retrospectives. Her account is treated by biographers and archivists as a primary source specifically for Grant's domestic life and character in his final two decades, distinct from the professional record of his films.