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Teri Garr, Actress Known For Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, Passes Away At 79
Teri Garr best known for her roles in Tootsie and Young Frankenstein and possessed over 140 credits passed away on Tuesday, October 29. Check out the reason below!
Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of death.
Teri Garr, known for playing the off-beat and saucy assistant in Mel Brooks's 1974 Young Frankenstein, passed away at 79. The late actress’s credentials include over 140 films and television, including her role in 1982's Tootsie, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.
In 2002, Garr revealed that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. On Tuesday, October 29, she died of the disease “surrounded by family and friends,” as reported by PEOPLE. Garr was born in Ohio in 1944, and her stepping into show business came from her parents who were performers themselves.
Her father was a vaudeville performer, while her mother was a Rockette who eventually worked in costume production. Garr’s father passed away when she was 11, leaving her mother to take care of her and her two older brothers. In a 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the actress opened up about her early life and credited their mother for bringing them up.
“She put two kids through school,” she said of her mother. “I have one brother who is a surgeon, there’s me, and my other brother builds boats,” Garr added. At a young age, the Tootsie actress started training in Battlet. She dropped out of college to move to New York to focus on acting and studied at the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
Her dancing skills came in handy when she officially started her career in the entertainment industry. She appeared in six Elvis Presley-starring films and on a dance reality show. However, she soon got tired of dancing in routines. “I got sick and fed up of dancing in the chorus,” she told Roger Ebert in 1980.
Despite training for 10 years, she asked herself the tricky question of why she wasn’t in the front but only part of the background dancers troupe. “ I didn't study all those years to be in the back and get no money,'” she added.
Since she was shy and reserved, directors would tell her to play “a little less complex” than her, which basically meant to play a dummy. Eventually, she started getting complex characters, and that’s how her journey kicked off. In 1993, she got married to John O'Neil and adopted a daughter, Molly. She is survived by her daughter and grandson, Tyryn.
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