Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Gertrude Margaret (née Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin “Frank” Remick, who owned a department store. Her maternal great-grandmother, Eliza Duffield, was an English-born preacher and her paternal grandfather was of Irish ancestry. Remick attended the Swaboda School of Dance, The Hewitt School and studied acting at Barnard College and the Actors Studio, making her Broadway theatre debut in 1953 with Be Your Age.  Remick made her film debut in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957). While filming the movie in Arkansas, Remick lived with a local family and practiced baton twirling so that she would be believable as the teenager who wins the attention of Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith).  After appearing as Eula Varner, the hot-blooded daughter-in-law of Will Varner (Orson Welles) in 1958’s The Long, Hot Summer, she appeared in These Thousand Hills (1959) as a dance hall girl. Remick came to prominence as a rape victim whose husband is tried for killing her attacker in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder. In 1960, she made a second film with Kazan, Wild River, which co-starred Montgomery Clift and Jo Van Fleet.

In 1962 she starred opposite Glenn Ford in the Blake Edwards suspense-thriller Experiment in Terror. That same year she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses. Bette Davis, also nominated that year for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, said “Miss Remick’s performance astonished me, and I thought, if I lose the Oscar, it will be to her.” They both lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker.  When Marilyn Monroe was fired during the filming of the comedy Something’s Got to Give, the studio announced that Remick would be her replacement. Co-star Dean Martin refused to continue, however, saying that while he admired Remick, he had signed onto the picture strictly to be able to work with Monroe.  Remick next appeared in the 1964 Broadway musical Anyone Can Whistle, written by Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents, which ran for only a week. Remick’s performance is captured on the original cast recording. This began a lifelong friendship between Remick and Sondheim, and she later appeared in the landmark 1985 concert version of his musical Follies. In 1966, she starred in the Broadway play Wait Until Dark, which was another big success and Remick was nominated for a Tony award for Best Actress. It was adapted into a successful film the following year starring Audrey Hepburn.

Remick continued to star in major films throughout the 1960’s and early 1970’s, including Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965), No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), The Detective (1968), Sometimes a Great Notion (1971), and A Delicate Balance (1973).  She co-starred with Gregory Peck in the 1976 horror film The Omen, in which her character’s adopted son, Damien, is revealed to be the Anti-Christ. The film was a box office hit, in spite of negative reviews.  Remick later appeared in several made-for-TV movies and miniseries, for which she earned a total of seven Emmy nominations. Several were of a historical nature, including two noted miniseries: Ike, in which she portrayed Kay Summersby, alongside Robert Duvall (her co-star in Wait Until Dark) as General Dwight Eisenhower, and Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill where she portrayed Winston Churchill’s mother, the American debutante Lady Randolph Churchill who married Lord Randolph Churchill.  She was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award in 1990.  Remick has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard.

Remick married producer Bill Colleran in 1957. They had two children, Katherine and Matthew. Remick and Colleran divorced in 1968. She married British producer William Rory “Kip” Gowans in 1970. She moved with Gowans to England and remained married to him until her death.  Remick died on July 2, 1991, at the age of 55, at her home in Los Angeles of kidney cancer.