Lisa Suzanne Blount (July 1, 1957 – October 25, 2010) was an American actress and film producer. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year for her performance in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), and later won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for producing The Accountant (2001).

Early life

Blount was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Margaret Louise Martin and Glen Roscoe Blount, and was raised in Jacksonville, Arkansas. She attended Jacksonville High School, but dropped out before graduating. She nonetheless studied theatre at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Valdosta State University in Georgia.

Career

After several small television roles and in films like September 30, 1955 and Dead & Buried, Blount received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year for her performance as Lynette Pomeroy, in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). She subsequently appeared in several "scream queen" horror film roles, including What Waits Below (1984, dir. Don Sharp), Cut and Run (1985, dir. Ruggero Deodato), Nightflyers (1987, dir. and most notably) John Carpenter's 1987 cult classic Prince of Darkness. Another role was that of Jim Profit's stepmother Bobbi Stakowski in the television series Profit. She appeared in season two of Moonlighting in the episode "Sleep Talkin' Guy" (1986). Blount returned to college in 1986, this time at San Francisco State University (SFSU), where she completed her degree in Theater Arts and spent the 1986/1987 academic year competing on SFSU's Forensics (Speech and Debate) Team. In the fall of 1987, she was cast as the female lead in the American Conservatory Theater's revival of the musical Hair. Blount later became a producer, and with her husband Ray McKinnon, won the Academy Award in 2001 for best live action short film for the film The Accountant. That film also credits her as wardrobe mistress. Blount produced and acted in Chrystal, which starred Billy Bob Thornton and was directed by McKinnon Her last acting role was in the film Randy and the Mob, which she also produced and was directed by McKinnon.

Death

Blount was found dead in her home in Little Rock, Arkansas by her mother on October 25, 2010. The coroner told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Blount appeared to have died two days earlier. No foul play was suspected, according to the Pulaski County coroner. Although the coroner did not release an official cause of death, Blount's mother told RadarOnline.com that her daughter had had idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), in which low levels of platelets keep blood from clotting and lead to bleeding and bruising. "I think that might have been part of the problem when she passed away because when I found her she had a purple look on her neck that looked like blood on the surface".

Filmography