The beloved comedic actress Teri Garr, known for her vivacious acting in movies like Young Frankenstein, Tootsie, and many others, has died. She was 79.
Her publicist Heidi Schaeffer said she died at home while surrounded by family. The cause of death was complications from multiple sclerosis.
Trained in ballet in her youth, Garr was a dancer in Elvis Presley movies such as Viva Las Vegas (1964) before making her movie breakthrough in the Mel Brooks horror spoof Young Frankenstein (1974).
Garr delivered memorable one-liners in a mock German accent as Inga, the lab assistant to Gene Wilder's Dr. Frankenstein. She won acclaim for her lively acting, with New Yorker critic Pauline Kael calling her "the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen."
Garr had show business in her blood: the Ohio native's father was a vaudeville performer, and her mother was a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall. Garr's father died when she was 11, and her mother raised Garr and her two older brothers in Los Angeles.
Garr was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the actress Sandy in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982), starring Dustin Hoffman.
“Teri was brilliant and singular in all she did, and had a heart of gold,” Hoffman said in a tribute to the New York Post. “Working with her was one of the great highs."
"There was no one like her," he added.
Garr's other movies include Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of The Third Kind (1977) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974). She lit up the screen in comedy favorite Dumb and Dumber (1994) as the fluttery stepmother of Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly.)
In addition to her movie work, Garr was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. She had a guest role as the mother of Phoebe in Friends.
Garr began noticing symptoms of multiple sclerosis while filming Tootsie, and she was diagnosed in the 1990s. The actress shared the news with the public in 2002 and became an advocate for people with MS.
Mel Brooks called Garr "so talented and so funny."
“So very sorry to hear about Teri Garr’s passing,” he wrote on X. “She was so talented and so funny. Her humor and lively spirit made the YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN set a pleasure to work on. Her ‘German’ accent had us all in stitches! She will be greatly missed.”
