Having trained as a dancer Teri Garr would break through to star in blockbuster films and earn an Oscar nomination too.
Born on 11th December 1944 to an actor father and dancer mother it would be an obvious career path for her to follow and the family moved from Ohio where she was born to Los Angeles where she graduated before moving to New Jersey to study acting
When she was only 11 years of age her father passed away and the family moved back to Hollywood where her mother worked in the wardrobe department on films and in TV and having trained for some years as a dancer Teri Garr danced away in the background of six Elvis films. She resented it having done so much training only to have to join the extras union and after taking acting classes alongside Jack Nicholson no less she landed her first speaking role in ‘Head’ (1968) that Nicholson had co-written. In the early 1970’s She went on to work on The Sonny & Cher comedy hour and the start of that decade were to see her land a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’ (one of his four great films from that decade). She followed that with lead roles in Mel Brooks ‘Young Frankenstein’ and Spielberg’s blockbuster follow up to Jaws, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ both of which were big hits.
They heightened her profile and Scorsese cast her in his nightmarish comedy After Hours and her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie’ saw her receive an Oscar nomination. The 1990’s saw Robert Altman cast her in his comeback film ‘The Player’ and then in ‘Pret-a-porter’ and she even appeared in Dumb and Dumber and had an infrequent role in TV sitcom, ‘Friends. Her comic turns influenced a generation of comedic actress including Tina Fey.
She was something of a feminist too and appalled at the sexism insisted that the producers on the Sonny & Cher show pay her the same as the men or she would quit.
Teri Garr married late in life to actor John O Neil in 1993 but the marriage only lasted three years and they had one child
But by 2002 her life took a dramatic turn for the worse when she was diagnosed with MS and she became an Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and published her autobiography in 2006 where she went into detail about her worsening health problems. The same year she suffered a brain aneurysm. Her condition meant she worked far less frequently and 2011 saw her appear in her last role on TV sitcom, How to marry a billionaire.
She died on 29th October 2024 aged 79 years of age.
related feature: The story behind the shot – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
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