Kim Darby

Kim Darby is one of those actresses who delivered a genuinely iconic performance and then somehow slipped just outside the spotlight — which honestly makes her all the more interesting to me. Her turn as Mattie Ross in the 1969 True Grit is remarkable: she held her own alongside John Wayne at the absolute peak of his legend, playing a steely, no-nonsense teenager with total conviction. That BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer was well earned. Born in LA and trained in the Hollywood system, she had this naturalistic quality that felt fresh against the big studio polish of the era. She kept working steadily in television and film for decades after, which in the brutal churn of Hollywood is its own kind of quiet achievement. I think she deserves more retrospective love than she gets.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Kim Darby

Name (Japanese)

キム・ダービー

Reading

きむ・だーびー

Born

July 8, 1947 (age 79)

Origin

Los Angeles, California, United States

Occupation

television actor / film actor / actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Cancer / Boar

High school

Van Nuys High School

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim%20Darby
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A0%E3%83%BB%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC%E3%83%93%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q434147

Tags

• California
• television actor
• film actor
• actor

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.