Teri Garr, The Oscar-Nominated Actress Famous For Roles In Young Frankenstein, Tootsie, And Mr. Mom, Has Died At 79 Years Old
Teri Garr had struggled with multiple sclerosis for over two decades and passed away Tuesday in Los Angeles, confirmed her manager Mark Gurvitz. After her diagnosis, Teri Garr reflected on the times of fear and confusion when she visited eleven doctors over several years with unexplained symptoms. She said she believes everyone is afraid and overwhelmed when they hear something like that. Not much information is available, and many individuals underestimate how serious the matter is. I’m basically just living my life.
Garr, whose father was a Broadway performer and her mother a Radio City Rockette, began dancing as a child and began auditioning for parts in Los Angeles after college. She worked early in her career as a dancer and in small parts in films including Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas.
As Teri Garr once recalled, “I finally asked myself, why am I not on the front line?” Also, I didn’t spend all those years studying to be overlooked and not compensated as well.
In addition, her career was transitional in the year 1970s, with her participation in several great TV series such as The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple, and The Bob Newhart Show too.
Moreover, her big break came in 1974, at where she acted in Mel Brooks’ critically acclaimed comedy Young Frankenstein, opposite Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman. Also, it was just a few years later that Teri Garr created one of her most memorable roles in Steven Spielberg’s landmark science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She played Ronnie Neary, a wife trying to cope with her husband’s inexplicable obsession after having a strange encounter with an alien.
Garr’s genius sparkled once more in Tootsie, 1982, where she played the role of a failed actress who shared a romantic affair with Dustin Hoffman’s character, who gained popularity masquerading as a woman in a television show. Her performance gained her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress during the Oscars in 1983. She remembers in her autobiography Speedbumps: Flooring it Through Hollywood in 2005 that this recognition makes her proud. The Academy noticed me, and they believed in me.
In that year she played Caroline Butler, an advertising executive, in the family comedy Mr. Mom opposite Michael Keaton.
In a 2012 interview, Teri Garr called it unsurprising that two of her most iconic characters had to do with challenging gender norms.
He was irritated to see women only represented in roles that emphasized an end based solely on physical appearance and using this to their advantage; hence engraining in peoples’ minds the fact that women needed to rely on their looks and not brains.
Teri Garr had various roles in movies and television series during her career. Throughout the 1990s, Garr appeared in Good & Evil in 1991, Good Advice in 1994, and Women of the House in 1995. Garr’s reputation for kooky, humorous comic timing made her especially right for the role of Phoebe Buffay’s eccentric mother in Friends, where she appeared three times in seasons three and four.
Throughout the 2000s, she made several guest appearances in the popular TV series Felicity, ER, and Life with Bonnie. This was further enhanced as she did voice acting, voicing Mary McGinnis in Batman Beyond and Sandy Gordon in What’s New, Scooby-Doo? in 2003. The last onscreen credit for her was in 2011 with the show How to Marry a Billionaire.
Through it all, Garr continued to speak out on behalf of those dealing with multiple sclerosis.
I think some people want you to be depressed. I am not depressed at all, I’m fine. Teri Garr said she does not see the value in being depressed since it will not improve things. It may have to do with my background in show business.
I have been able to keep that kind of mindset, and I am doing that right now with MS.
