Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Margaret Patricia (née Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin "Frank" Remick, who owned a department store. She attended the Swaboda School of Dance 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). When they were 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 heart 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 Read more...

Remick's first husband was Bill Colleran, an American television producer, with whom she had a son and daughter. Her second husband was British film producer Kip Gowans.

She died in 1991 at age 55 in Los Angeles of kidney and liver cancer.

Remick has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard.