Teri Garr, who starred in Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, dies aged 79
Oscar-nominated actress Teri Garr, best known for her roles in Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, has died.
Garr, who also starred in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, died at the age of 79 due to complications from multiple sclerosis (MS), her manager Heidi Schaeffer said on Tuesday.
She appeared in three episodes of Friends in 1997 and 1998 as Phoebe Abbott, the estranged birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe.
Teri Garr with Dustin Hoffman (L) and Sydney Pollack in Tootsie. Pic: Rex Features/Everett/Shutterstock
In a screen career that spanned more than 40 years, she was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in 1982’s Tootsie, starring opposite Dustin Hoffman, but lost out to Maureen Stapleton.
Her most famous role was playing Inga, a Transylvania local who becomes the assistant to Gene Wilder’s Dr Frederick Frankenstein in Mel Brooks’s 1974 comedy hit, Young Frankenstein, part of a star-studded cast that included Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman and Gene Hackman.
Garr had plenty of memorable lines, such as “Vould you like to have a roll in zee hay?”
She was a familiar face on sitcoms and late-night talk shows, including NBC’s The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era.
She struggled with health issues in recent years and in 2002, she revealed she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had been suffering symptoms for some two decades.
Five years later, she underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm.
Teri Garr in Los Angeles in 2012. Pic: Reuters
She later became a key advocate for MS awareness, traveling across the country to speak with doctors and patients about her experiences, NBC News, Sky’s US partner said. She retired from acting in 2011.
Teri Ann Garr was born in Cleveland in 1944 to showbusiness parents and began dance lessons aged six.
Her father, Eddie, was a vaudeville performer and actor who appeared on Broadway and her mother, Phyllis, had been a member of the Rockettes precision dance troupe.
After studying in Los Angeles, Garr moved to New York to pursue a career first in ballet and then in acting, studying at the famed Actor’s Studio in Manhattan.
Garr, a quirky comedy performer, got her break with bit parts in a number of 1960s Elvis Presley movies, including Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout.
As well as enjoying memorable movie roles, such in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and One From The Heart, she was a familiar face on TV, including roles in That Girl, Batman, and The Andy Griffith Show, Variety said on its website.
She played a dizzy secretary in an episode of the original Star Trek and became a regular singer and dancer on The Sonny And Cher Show.
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In her autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, published in 2005, she complained of being typecast as a ditzy woman, Variety said.
In 1993, Garr married building contractor John O’Neil, and that same year, in November, they were present when their adopted daughter Molly O’Neil was born.
The couple divorced three years later.
She is survived by her daughter, and a grandson, Tyryn.
Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump he “will not back down” from Russia’s goals in Ukraine during a phone call today, the Kremlin has said.
The Russian president spoke to his US counterpart for almost an hour, and Mr Trump “again raised the issue of an early end to military action” in Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.
In response, Mr Putin said “Russia will not back down” from its aims there, which include “the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs,” Mr Ushakov said.
The phrase “root causes” is shorthand for Moscow’s argument that it was compelled to invade Ukraine in order to prevent the country from joining NATO.
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Trump and Putin’s latest call on Ukraine
Ukraine and its European allies say this is a pretext to justify what they call an imperial-style war, but Mr Trump has previously shown sympathy with Russia.
At the same time, Mr Putin told the US president that Russia is ready to continue negotiating, the aide said.
The Russian president said any prospective peace deal must see Ukraine give up its NATO bid and recognise his country’s territorial gains.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, seen with Mr Trump in June, is pushing for Ukraine to join NATO. Pic: Reuters
He also briefed Mr Trump on agreements made last month, which saw Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war and dead soldiers.
Specific dates for the third round of peace talks in Istanbul were not discussed – nor was the US decision to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine.
Mr Putin and Mr Trump’s call came after the Pentagon confirmed some weapons due to be sent to Ukraine have been held as it reviews military stockpiles.
The paused shipments include air defence missiles and precision-guided artillery, two people familiar with the situation have said.
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The decision led to Ukraine calling in the acting US envoy to Kyiv on Wednesday to underline the importance of military aid from Washington.
Kyiv also cautioned that the move would weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against intensifying Russian airstrikes and battlefield advances.
Mr Putin and Mr Trump’s phone call was the sixth they have publicly disclosed since the US president returned to the White House in January.
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