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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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      in Movies

      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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      in Music

      She’s Shaking Up Classical Music While Confronting Illness

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      The pianist Alice Sara Ott, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, is upending concert culture — and defying stereotypes about multiple sclerosis.The pianist Alice Sara Ott, barefoot and wearing a silver bracelet, was smiling and singing to herself the other day as she practiced a jazzy passage of Ravel at Steinway Hall in Midtown Manhattan. A Nintendo Switch, which she uses to warm up her hands, was by her side (another favored tool is a Rubik’s Cube). A shot of espresso sat untouched on the floor.“I feel I have finally found my voice,” Ott said during a break. “I feel I can finally be myself.”Ott, 35, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, has built a global career, recording more than a dozen albums and appearing with top ensembles. She has become a force for change in classical music, embracing new approaches (playing Chopin on beat-up pianos in Iceland) and railing against stuffy concert culture (she performs without shoes, finding it more comfortable).And Ott, who lives in Munich and has roots in Germany and Japan, has done so while grappling with illness. In 2019, when she was 30, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She says she has not shown any symptoms since starting treatment, but the disorder has made her reflect on the music industry’s grueling work culture.“I learned to accept that there is a limit and to not go beyond that,” she said. “Everybody knows how to ignore their body and just go on. But there’s always a payback.”Ott has used her platform to help dispel myths about multiple sclerosis, a disorder of the central nervous system that can cause a wide range of symptoms, including muscle spasms, numbness and vision problems. She has taken to social media to detail her struggles and to challenge those who have suggested that the illness has affected her playing.She said she felt she had no choice but to be transparent, saying it was important to show that people with multiple sclerosis could lead full lives.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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      in Television

      Christina Applegate Gets Standing Ovation at Emmys as She Presents First Award

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      Christina Applegate made a rare public appearance to present the first Emmy, for supporting actress in a comedy series. Glamorous in a plunging gown and visibly overcome by the long standing ovation she received, she still made self-deprecating jokes about Ozempic and disability. “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up,” she told the crowd. “It’s fine.”Applegate was nominated for best actress in a comedy for “Dead to Me.” (Quinta Brunson won, “Abbott Elementary.”) The Netflix series was a sleek, savage container for Applegate’s gifts, both her forceful PTA Mom prettiness and the darker currents of anger and ambition that swirled just underneath, giving her comedy a whetted edge. She played Jen to Linda Cardellini’s Judy. Jen was a woman unmoored by the death of her husband who found port in a ride-or-die friendship and an escalating series of crimes.Applegate hasn’t announced any new projects since receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2021. (“It’s not like I came on the other side of it, like, ‘Woohoo, I’m totally fine,’” she told The Times in 2022, speaking of that diagnosis. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed.”)Applegate is the rare actress to have translated teen stardom (she was Kelly Bundy, long of leg and scant of prefrontal cortex, on “Married With Children”) into a robust adult career that includes the sitcoms “Samantha Who” and “Up All Night,” as well as the “Anchorman” and “Bad Moms” film franchises. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Introducing, Selma Blair’ Review: An Actress in Her Second Act

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      A window into the actress’s battle with multiple sclerosis.The documentary “Introducing, Selma Blair” presents a bracingly relatable version of an often all-too-artificial event: a performer navigating the process of reinvention. Change came to the actress Selma Blair involuntarily, when she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system, in August 2018. She went public with her illness with an Instagram post in October of that year.Blair’s initial announcement was candid, detailing the initial apathy she received from medical professionals, and she offered generous thanks to the friends — some famous and some not — who encouraged her to seek help. At the time, Blair, now 49, was best known for her supporting roles in several of the most approachable and entertaining Hollywood movies of the last 20 years. This familiarity lent to her remarkably frank post the quality of reading an update from an old friend.Her decisions following her public announcement remained consistent with this initial burst of sincerity. Blair continued to publicly document her illness on Instagram. She attended red carpets with a jeweled cane. She offered interviews, permitting journalists to show her disruptions of speech and movement. She was in turn glamorous and clumsy, funny and mournful.The documentary “Introducing, Selma Blair” expands the existing record of Blair’s life into a coherent, feature-length account. The film begins in 2019, after the initial cycle of media attention has passed. The director, Rachel Fleit, follows Blair at home for over a year, her camera watching in vérité style as the actress contemplates the aftermath of her diagnosis and plans ahead for life with a disability.At the start of filming in 2019, Blair was preparing for an experimental medical treatment that would combine chemotherapy and stem cell transplants to repair her immune system. When the procedures begin, the movie follows her into the hospital, incorporating video diaries from Blair in convalescence.The greatest asset of the film is its ability to simulate the intimacy of disclosure, and Blair’s comfort with the camera — her actress-y will to entertain — makes her a uniquely endearing subject. The forthrightness that has become the signature of her public persona is on full display; she treats the camera as if it were a trusted friend.In some of the film’s most touching sequences, Blair allows the filmmakers to watch as she plays with her son, her jolting movements at once a part of the fun, and evidence of her physical state. When he is out of the picture, she shares her worries about how her visible vulnerability might affect her child. She jokes, she weeps, she cries out in pain.The movie does not address all aspects of Blair’s life. There is little discussion of her career, and no mention of how she affords the extravagant home and the medical treatments that have provided her with relief through the worst days of her illness. What this human interest story offers instead is a simple and sympathetic portrait of a captivating character. Curiously, the career supporting actress Selma Blair has never before seemed like such a star.Introducing, Selma BlairNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. Also available on Discovery+ beginning Oct. 21. More