Terri Gar, the comedy star best known for her bold performances in films like Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, has died. She was 79.
Gar’s publicist confirmed the actress passed away Tuesday (Oct. 29) in her Los Angeles home from complications of multiple sclerosis, which she had been battling since 1999, per Variety.
The daughter of Broadway actor Eddie Gar and dancer Phillis Gar, Terri began her career as a dancer with several roles in film and television in the ’60s on The Andy Griffith Show, Pajama Party, and more.
But her breakout role came in the 1974 feature Young Frankenstein, where she delivered an iconic performance opposite Gene Wilder as Inga, a young assistant who hilariously propositioned his Dr. Frederick Frankenstein for sex by asking, “Vould you like to have a roll in ze hay?”
That same year, Gar was cast in Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Conversation. Thus began a long and fruitful career in comedy with performances in Maude, The Sonny & Cher Show, Faerie Tale Theatre, Saturday Night Live, and several late night appearances. In 1997, she had a brief recurring role on Friends as Lisa Kudrow’s mother.
Her most memorable performances were often as the wife or partner to outlandish men, as seen in her Oscar-nominated performance opposite Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, or as Michael Keaton‘s workaholic wife in Mr. Mom, or in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
She railed against the type cast in a 2008 interview with The A.V. Club where she decried the “long suffering” wife trope.
“They only write those parts for women. If there’s ever a woman who’s smart, funny, or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don’t write that,” she candidly expressed. “They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them. Those are the kind of parts I play, and the kind of parts that there are for me in this world. In this life.”
Gar announced she had multiple sclerosis in 2002 after receiving her diagnosis in 1999. She became an avid advocate for MS and raised awareness for the disease, which she opened up about in her 2005 autobiography Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood.
She later suffered a brain aneurism in 2006 that impacted her speech and motor skills, affecting her ability to work. That year, she starred in Unaccompanied Minors and Expired, which were among the last few roles she took until she stopped acting in 2011.
She is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neil, and her grandson.
The post R.I.P. Terri Gar: ‘Tootsie’ And ‘Mr. Mom’ Actress Dead At 79 appeared first on Decider.
