By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES – Terri Garr, the Academy Award-nominated comedy actress whose flamboyant personality graced the screen in such films as “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” died Tuesday at the age of 79.
Garr, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in the 1982 gender-swap comedy “Tootsie,” died of complications from multiple sclerosis in Los Angeles, said publicist Heidi Schaefer.
The actress revealed in 2002 that she had been diagnosed with MS after experiencing symptoms for nearly two decades. She became an advocate for MS research and treatment. In 2007, Garr underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm and was confined to a wheelchair for some time.
“I had to learn to walk again, talk again, and think again, which I’m not even sure is necessary in Hollywood,” he joked in a 2008 interview with Reuters.
Terri Ann Garr was born on December 11, 1944, in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio, to show-business parents: her father, Eddie, was a vaudeville performer and actor who appeared on Broadway and her mother, Phyllis used to dance in New York. York’s Radio City Music Hall as one of the Rockettes.
After attending college in Los Angeles, Garr moved to New York City to pursue a career in ballet and then acting, and studied at the renowned Actor’s Studio in Manhattan.
Some of her early credits include work as a background dancer in Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas”.
After roles in TV shows such as “Star Trek” and “Batman,” Garr was cast by Mel Brooks as a German lab assistant in the 1974 film “Young Frankenstein.”
She turned to drama in the Steven Spielberg science-fiction classic “Close Encounters,” playing the wife of a man obsessed with UFOs.
Gar said his sense of humor helped him persevere despite health challenges.
“This is absolutely serious,” she told Reuters. “The most important thing is a sense of humor and attitude in everything.”
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