Pam Grier, the sultry actress who helped define the 1970s while starring in movies such as “Foxy Brown” and “Coffy,” came to Charlotte Friday to promote her new memoir, “Foxy: My Life in Three Acts.”

Speaking to an audience at the Harvey B. Gantt Center, Grier said the book, noted for its intimate details, is more about sharing life’s lessons. Her visit was sponsored by RealEyes Bookstore, which sponsors the annual Charlotte Literary Festival.

Grier spoke of growing up with a grandfather who taught the girls in her family to hunt and fish and encouraged them to be self-sufficient. She talked about coming of age at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement. And she recalled battling cervical cancer in her late 30s, after a doctor said she had only 18 months to live.

At age 60, Grier retains her Hollywood looks. The iconic Afro is gone, replaced by shoulder-length black hair. And although her once-shapely physique is no longer the stuff of pin-up posters, she spoke with a confidence and self-awareness that can only come with time and reflection.

One of the more poignant moments occurred when Grier, who was born in Winston-Salem, was reunited with her first baby sitter.

Molested at an Early Age

As for her book, Grier reveals for the first time that, after being left alone at an aunt’s house, she was molested by two boys--with a third waiting his turn- at age 6. Overnight, the once carefree, trusting young girl became withdrawn and began speaking with a stutter that took years to overcome.

That same year, a mentally unstable classmate, frustrated that he could not get her attention, hit her over the head with a steel chair. Another day the boy caught her walking home alone, knocked her to the ground and began rubbing himself against her before an adult passerby pulled him off.

For years, Grier told the audience, she did her best to downplay her looks and immersed herself in books and part-time jobs.

At 18, she went out with a family friend -- one of the few dates she allowed herself -- and the man raped her at a party. Again, she told no one.

Grier conceded that the book offers some “very intimate details, which are adult.”

“I had to share things that I experienced,” she told the audience.

Some of those experiences involved constantly moving as a military brat before her parents divorced. The family never knew whether a new assignment would mean the total acceptance they found in England or the stifling racism they encountered on some American bases.

Years later, when Grier struck out on her own in Hollywood, it took all the nerve she had to walk into a women’s department store and believe that she could actually try on clothes before buying them.

Her Romantic Life in Hollywood

As for her love life, the memoir offers glimpses into Grier’s romances with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who wanted her to convert to Islam), Freddie Prinze (who wanted her to have his baby) and Richard Pryor (who thought she could help save him from drugs), according to a New York Times review.

At the Gantt Center, Grier noted in particular her time with Pryor, who died in 2005 from cardiac arrest at the age of 65. Grier said the comedian liked her because she made him laugh, and she told a story about Pryor, naked under a bathrobe, riding in a convertible as the two took his horse, Ginger, to a veterinarian.

“He was a wonderful human being who did not know how to read,” she said. “He had a sixth-grade education.”

As much as anything else, Grier said, Pryor had hoped that she could help him kick drugs cold turkey.

In the end, she said, the drugs won out.

“I had to make the choice to either be with him or not,” she recalled. “…In our relationship, I realized that his life was going to impact me as a woman… To the end we were great friends.”

Grier offered praise for Pryor’s wife, Jennifer Lee, who was with him till the end.

“I don’t think, honestly, that I could have done that the way she did,” Grier said. “He was seriously ill in the last stages of his life, and she did an excellent job.”

Battling Cervical Cancer

Grier also talked about her battle with cancer. She said her doctor, after he had done all he could with Western medicine, sent her to Chinatown for herbs and tea.

“I really believe that balance, yin and yang, saved my life,” she said. “To this day, I look for every Chinatown in every city I go to.”

Grier said she got her tough-girl image from the real women in her life: Her mother, who worked as a nurse, was Coffy; her aunt, a frustrated artist who couldn’t get into college, was Foxy Brown.

Grier, who lives on a ranch in Colorado, is currently shooting a film with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

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