Oscar-winning American actress Maureen Stapleton, who traded early success in the theatre into a highly successful film career in movies such as Reds and Cocoon, has died. She was 80.
Stapleton died at about 7.30am on March 13 at her home in Lenox, Massachusetts of complications arising from a respiratory illness, said Ned Roche, head of the local Roche Funeral Home.
Born to an Irish Catholic family, Stapleton began acting in theatre after finishing high school.
She came to New York City in 1943 and several years later enrolled in Lee Strasberg’s famed Actor’s Studio, where her contemporaries included Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.
She made her Broadway debut in 1946 but it was her performance in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo in 1951 that brought her recognition and a Tony award, and began a long and fruitful connection with that particular playwright’s work.
She won a second Tony award for her portrayal of an alcoholic singer in Neil Simon’s The Gingerbread Lady in 1970.
That same year, she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for Airport as she embarked on a film career that would bring her a much larger audience.
There was another Oscar nomination, for supporting actress, for her work in Woody Allen’s Interiors in 1978 and she finally won the same category in 1981, playing the anarchist Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty’s Reds.
Her other film credits included Cocoon (1985) and its sequel, and Nuts (1987), in which she played Barbra Streisand’s mother. — AFP
