Karolyn Grimes

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Karolyn Grimes (born July 4, 1940 in Hollywood, California) is an actress known best for her role as the child Zuzu in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life.

Grimes' mother pushed her into acting, but her acting career declined with her mother's health. The latter died from illness when Grimes was 14, and she lost her father from a car crash a year later. A court ruling sent her from Hollywood to Osceola, Missouri, where she lived in what she called a "bad home" with her aunt and uncle. She went to college, married, raised kids, and became a medical technologist. Zuzu had been a part of Grimes' past but as It's a Wonderful Life gained more attention, she gave local interviews in the 1980s and national interviews in the 1990s. Her first husband's death in a hunting accident, 18-year-old son's suicide in 1989, and second husband's death of cancer in 1994 made it difficult for Grimes to move on and embrace the hope and religion of the cinematic classic, but after she lost her fortune to the early 2000s recession, she made her ambassadorship to the movie her career. She is currently on tour opening big-screen showings of It's a Wonderful Life at dinner theatres worldwide, signing autographs, sharing tidbits, and point out small 'goofs'. One such mistake is that she, 6 years old at the time, faked the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne" in the movie's famous closing scene. "If you watch closely, Jimmy Stewart is holding me tightly and he looks at me and begins to laugh because he knows I'm not singing the right words," she says.

"You have a choice. You can drown in your sorrows, be the grumpy old Mr. Potter and be hurt and be in pain ... but I think you need to put that behind you because, my gosh, life is a wonderful gift." Grimes says. She believes in and personally relates to the movie's message: "There have been adverse things happen in my own life, but there are balances out there. And the movie itself has affected my life so much because I have George Bailey's philosophy … that friendships and caring and loving will carry you through anything." "I really feel like Zuzu is kind of a mission maybe, I don't know. I think that there is a higher power at work and that I had to go through a lot of adverse situations in my life to understand other people's pain."