Garr, Teri

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    Teri Garr’s Life in Pictures

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    Teri Garr, who died on Tuesday at 79, will be remembered for her strong comedic chops and for her ability to act with her eyes, displaying a wide range of emotions.In 1983, she earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance in “Tootsie” opposite Dustin Hoffman. That movie, like many others on Garr’s résumé, showed that she could command attention alongside her male counterparts. If her best-known roles could had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Offscreen, Garr faced hurdles related to her health and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, after more than a decade of symptoms. She eventually became a spokeswoman for research into the disease, making appearances in her wheelchair.Here are some snapshots from her life and career.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty ImagesIn “Young Frankenstein” (1974), Garr played a beautiful but ditsy German lab assistant.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr and Frankie Avalon in 1965.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr’s eyes were perhaps one of her most recognizable features as an actress. They could show pain, sympathy, vulnerability and intrigue.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesAmy Irving, Carrie Fisher and Garr in 1977.Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesA regular on the talk show circuit, Garr was a favorite guest of both David Letterman and Johnny Carson.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesGarr as Ronnie Neary in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), directed by Steven Spielberg.ShutterstockGarr, with Jackie Gleason in “The Sting II,” hailed from a show-business family. Her father was a vaudevillian.Columbia Pictures, via AlamyBy the mid-1960s, Garr had appeared in four Elvis Presley movies. She eventually took on more serious roles, earning an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance as Sandy Lester in “Tootsie” (1982).Sherwood ProductionsEntertainment Pictures, via AlamyIn a departure from her ditsy roles, Garr played an overconfident ad-agency workaholic opposite Michael Keaton in “Mr. Mom” (1983).Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesGarr’s comedic chops made her stand out against a crowded backdrop of Hollywood actresses during the 1970s and ’80s. She hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesMichael Westmore, Garr and Zoltan Elek at the Academy Awards in 1986.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc., via Getty ImagesGarr married John O’Neil in 1993 and later welcomed a daughter, Molly O’Neil.Getty ImagesGarr played Phoebe Abbott in three episodes of “Friends” over the show’s third and fourth seasons.Rusty Russell/Getty ImagesWhile making films, Garr noticed troubling physical symptoms and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. She later became a spokeswoman for M.S. research and support.Valerie Macon/Getty ImagesGarr with Leonard Maltin, Mel Brooks and Cloris Leachman. More

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      Teri Garr, Comic Actress in ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Tootsie,’ Dies at 79

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      An Oscar nominee for her role in “Tootsie,” she was also a favorite guest of David Letterman and Johnny Carson and a three-time host of “Saturday Night Live.”Teri Garr, the alternately shy and sassy blond actress whose little-girl voice, deadpan comic timing, expressive eyes and cinematic bravery in the face of seemingly crazy male characters made her a star of 1970s and ’80s movies and earned her an Oscar nomination for her role in “Tootsie,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79.Her publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, said the cause was complications of multiple sclerosis.Ms. Garr received that diagnosis in 1999, after 16 years of symptoms and medical research; she made her condition public in 2002. In late 2006, she had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was in a coma for a week, but she was eventually able to regain the ability to walk and talk.Onscreen, Ms. Garr’s outstanding features were her eyes, which could seem simultaneously pained, baffled, sympathetic, vulnerable, intrigued and determined, whether she was registering a grand new discovery or holding back tears. If her best-known roles had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Ms. Garr and Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” (1982). She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor played by Mr. Hoffman.Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoIn “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” she initially went into denial when her husband (Richard Dreyfuss) became obsessed with U.F.O.s, but promptly abandoned him, taking the children, when he built, in their family room, a mountain of garbage, fencing and backyard soil.In “Oh, God!,” Ms. Garr was supportive when her husband (John Denver), a California supermarket manager, told everyone that he was hanging out with God incarnate (George Burns). In “Tootsie,” for which she earned a 1983 Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, she whined eloquently as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor (Dustin Hoffman) who was behaving strangely. It turned out he had been posing as a woman to get better acting jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Teri Garr Found the Soul in Memorable Ditsy Blondes

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      In “Tootsie,” “After Hours” and other films, she played truly unhinged characters while also layering in sadness or drama.In “Tootsie,” Teri Garr perfected the polite way to say you had a bad time at a party. Bidding a friend good night, her character, a struggling actress named Sandy, tells him, “It was a wonderful party, my date left with someone else, I had a lot of fun, do you have any seconal?”She sounds sunny as she’s saying all this and barely takes a breath. It’s a master class in comedic despair.Garr, who died on Tuesday at 79 from complications of multiple sclerosis, turned the neurotic basket case into an art form. On paper a Teri Garr role could be written off as a daffy blonde, but in her hands she gave these women depth and made them entrancingly funny.Garr came from a show business family — her father was a vaudevillian, and she arguably inherited that can-do spirit of performing. Though she had appeared in a number of television shows and films throughout the 1960s, including as a dancer in multiple Elvis flicks, she was introduced to most audiences in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein” (1974, not currently streaming), playing Inga, the laboratory assistant to Gene Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein. (Don’t mispronounce it.)Brooks first presents her lying in the back of a hay wagon. She’s beautiful and busty, but immediately lands her first punchline.“Hello,” she says seductively, in her ostensibly Transylvanian accent. “Would you like to have a roll in the hay?” Wilder pauses, taken aback by her apparent forward proposition. She interjects, brightly. “It’s fun!” She starts flinging her body around, singing, “Roll, roll, roll in the hay.” She doesn’t mean the sexual innuendo — or maybe she does.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More