Veteran comedic actress Teri Garr dead after long health battle

Actress Teri Garr, who scored an Oscar nomination for her role in Tootsie and played Phoebe’s mum in Friends, has died after a long health battle.

Teri Garr, known for her work in films like Young Frankenstein and Tootsie and a memorable guest role in the hit sitcom Friends, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.

Garr’s publicist confirmed to The Associated Press that the actress and comedian died of complications due to multiple sclerosis.

She began her career in the entertainment industry as a background dancer in a number of Elvis Presley movies, and went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for her role as Sandy Lester in the 1982 Dustin Hoffman comedy, Tootsie.

The daughter of Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian and Phyllis Lind, one of the original Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Garr seemed destined for show business.

Garr earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Tootsie …

… and in later years became a tireless multiple sclerosis campaigner. Picture: Rusty Russell/Getty

She appeared in nine Elvis Presley movies, including Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout, and Clambake.

While Garr was a featured dancer on Shindig, and performed as a cast member on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, her first big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller, The Conversation.

Mel Brooks said he would hire her as Gene Wilder’s lab assistant in YoungFrankenstein, only if she could speak with a German accent.

Garr (far left) in Gene Wilder’s 1974 film Young Frankenstein.

In 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once remembered.

The gig turned her into a comedy queen, and landed her roles in Mr. Mom with Michael Keaton, Out Cold with John Lithgow, and Mom and Dad Save the World.

With more than 150 acting credits to her name, she earned acclaim on television too, working as Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek, Sgt. Phyllis Norton in the TV series McCloud, Good & Evil and Women of the House.

She also had a memorable guest stint on the sitcom Friends, portraying the mother of Lisa Kudrow. Garr’s last credited role was in the 2011 TV series, How to Marry a Billionaire.

Teri Garr with Lisa Kudrow in Friends.

Garr revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2002, and survived emergency brain

aneurysm surgery four years later. Soon after, she became a spokeswoman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and would often give speeches at gatherings in the United States and Canada.

She shared details of her diagnosis in her 2005 autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood.

“My body had a trick or two up its sleeve,” Garr wrote. “A stumble here, a tingling finger there. I was trained as a dancer and knew better than to indulge the random aches and pains that visited now and then. Being a successful Hollywood actress may be challenging, but little did I know that the very body that had always been my calling card would betray me.”

This story originally appeared on Fox News and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Veteran comedic actress Teri Garr dead after long health battle