Terry Ann Garr
(December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024)

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

Her self-described “big break” as an actress was landing a role in the 1968 Star Trek episode “Assignment: Earth” after which she said, “I finally started to get real acting work.

Garr gained prominence for her roles in Francis Ford Coppola‘s thriller The Conversation (1974), Mel Brooks‘s comedy Young Frankenstein (1974), and in 1977 both Steven Spielberg‘s science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Carl Reiner‘s Oh, God!.

She earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Sydney Pollack comedy Tootsie (1982). She reunited with Coppola in a role in his musical One from the Heart (1982), starred opposite Michael Keaton in the family film Mr. Mom (1983), and acted in Martin Scorsese‘s black comedy After Hours (1985).