Oscar-nominated actress Terri Garr is best known for her work movies Like Young Frankenstein, Tootsie and the Multiple TV series Like Friends, according to his manager is dead.
She was 79 years old.
Watch the video above: Hollywood star Terry Garr dies.
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Garr died on Tuesday in Los Angeles, more than 20 years after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, her manager Mark Gurvitz told CNN.
He first shared his diagnosis publicly in an interview with CNN in 2002 in an effort to raise awareness for others living with MS.
“I think everyone gets scared and scared when they hear something like that,” Garr said of his diagnosis for the first time, after visiting 11 doctors and experiencing symptoms for years he couldn’t explain. Remembered about learning.
“That’s because there’s a lot – you know, not a lot of information about it. And many people don’t know that it’s not that bad. I mean, I’m moving on with my life.
The daughter of a Broadway performer and the Rockettes, Gar studied dance growing up and began auditioning soon after graduating from high school in Los Angeles. His early credits include dancing and appearing as an extra in films such as Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.
“Finally I asked myself, why am I not ahead?” Garr later reflected. “I didn’t study all those years just to be behind and not get any money.”
The 1970s proved to be a prolific time for Garr, who appeared in episodes of the sketch comedy series The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple, and The Bob Newhart Show, among many others.
Her big break came in 1974, when she played Inga in the comedy hit Young Frankenstein, directed by Mel Brooks, alongside Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman.
Two years later, Garr appeared in one of her most notable roles, when she played a wife named Ronnie Neri in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi epic Close Encounters who loses her husband (Richard Dreyfuss) as a result of an alien encounter. ) was trying to understand the inexplicable obsession of. The third kind.
In Tootsie, Garr played a struggling actress dating Dustin Hoffman’s hero, who later became famous by pretending to be a woman on a soap opera.
The role earned Garr a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 1983 Academy Awards.
“I was proud,” Garr wrote of the nomination in his 2005 memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood.
“The Academy not only knew I existed, but they thought I was cool!”
Also in 1983, she played advertising executive Caroline Butler in the lighthearted family comedy Mister Mom opposite Michael Keaton.
In a 2012 interview, Garr said she was not surprised that two of her most memorable roles were related to breaking stereotypes about gender norms.
“It annoys me when they write a character who is just a sexy woman who seduces people to get her way, perpetuating this myth that women have to use their brains or their intelligence. That’s the way it’s supposed to work instead,” Garr reflected.
His career continued with more film and television work. Throughout the ’90s, Garr appeared in 1991’s Good and Evil, 1994’s Good Advice, and 1995’s Women of the House.
Garr was known for her slightly addictive and zany comic timing, which naturally made her the ideal candidate to play the mother to Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay on Friends. Gar appeared in a total of three episodes in the third and fourth seasons.
During the 2000s, Garr made guest appearances on Felicity, ER, and Live with Bonnie.
She also dabbled in voice acting early on, voicing the character Mary McGinnis in the animated Batman Beyond TV series, as well as voicing Sandy Gordon in the 2003 What’s New, Scooby-Doo? Animated series.
Gar’s final credit came in 2011 when she appeared in the TV series How to Marry a Billionaire.
Through it all, Garr was a vocal advocate for people with MS.
“I think some people want you to be upset. Not only am I not bothered, but I’m fine. I don’t see any benefit in being depressed, I don’t think it gets you anywhere,” Garrer. reflected in an interview He maintained a sense of optimism.
“Maybe it has to do with my show-business background. You’re always told you’re not good enough for something, not tall enough, not pretty enough, whatever. I would say, ‘But I’m smart, I’m talented, I’m this, I’m that!’ I’ve always been able to do that, and I do it now with MS.
“I have always been an adventurous person,” she said.
