So Sad! Oscar-winning actress, a legend, dies at 79…

Teri Garr died at the age of 79.

Garr has appeared in almost 140 films and television shows. Her comedic roles in films like Young Frankenstein (1974) and Tootsie (1982) earned her an Academy Award nomination. In 2002, Garr revealed that she suffered from multiple sclerosis.

Garr died on Tuesday from the condition, “surrounded by family and friends,” according to publicist Heidi Schaeffer.

Garr was born in Ohio in 1944. Her parents both worked in the entertainment industry: her father was a vaudeville performer, and her mother was a Rockette who later worked in costume production. The family, which included her two elder brothers, relocated to New Jersey before settling in Los Angeles. Garr’s father died when she was eleven.

“She put two kids through school,” Garr told the Los Angeles Times of her mother in 2008. “I have a brother who is a surgeon and another brother who builds boats. She was in the wardrobe. She was a regular client at the studio. She’d always remark, ‘We’re still living.'”

Garr began training as a dancer, focusing on ballet. She dropped out of college to pursue acting in New York, where she attended the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

Her early endeavors allowed her to showcase her dance abilities. She starred in six films starring Elvis Presley, including Viva Las Vegas (1964). She also performed on television variety shows as a dancer.

In 1980, she told Roger Ebert, “I became sick and tired of dancing in the chorus.” ” I trained for ten years. At the end, I asked myself, “Why am I not at the forefront?” I haven’t studied for years, and I have no money.

“But I was shy and kind,” she said. So I started going to the therapist and learned how to communicate with others. Directors would tell me, ‘We want you to play a character that isn’t as complicated as you.’ Yes, certainly. They mean, ‘You’re playing a dummy.'”

Her first speaking appearance was in The Monkees’ 1968 film Head. Jack Nicholson, whom she had met in acting class, wrote it. In that same year, she made her first significant speaking appearance in “Assignment: Earth,” a Star Trek episode. She also became a regular on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1972.

Garr soon achieved enormous success. In 1974, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s thriller The Conversation. That same year, she landed the role of Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant, in Mel Brooks’ horror comedy Young Frankenstein, which she got with the aid of her mother.

“My mother was the wardrobe woman on Young Frankenstein,” she told PBS in 2012. “I asked her if they’d finished casting, and she said she didn’t know.” Garr asked her agent for an audition, and after four rounds, they cast her. “It was unbelievable.” Her experience on Sonny & Cher helped her land the job. “I got the German accent from Cher’s wig lady,” she explained.

Three years later, she featured in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when she demonstrated her theatrical abilities. Then, in 1982, she appeared with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. Pauline Kael, a film reviewer, described Garr as “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.” She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the picture, but lost to Jessica Lange, her Tootsie co-star.

Garr’s other notable film appearances at the time included One From the Heart (1981), Mr. Mom (1983), After Hours (1985), and Mom and Dad Save the World (1992). But in a comedy industry dominated by males, Garr had to fight for deeper depth in female parts, and she wasn’t always successful.

“I tried to make the character a little more real,” she told The Washington Post in 1983 of her role in Mr. Mom. “They completely halted my progress.” This profession doesn’t require genius to realize that becoming a director is the only way to achieve anything you want.”

She appeared on several television programs, including McCloud, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, Maude, and Barnaby Jones. She hosted Saturday Night Live three times: in 1980, 1983, and 1985. Garr was a regular guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman, although she told Roger Ebert in 1988 that her Letterman appearances, in which she frequently stood in for canceled guests, probably impeded her from securing more serious roles.

“I went on the Letterman show the first time to plug something, and then I came back as the Fool, the court jester,” she claimed. Ebert asserted that Garr was among the select few Letterman guests who possessed the ability to “challenge his charm.”

Garr’s later performances included appearances in Casper Meets Wendy, Designing Women spinoff series Women of the House, Dick, and Ghost World. She also appears in Friends as Phoebe’s biological mother.

Garr announced in 2002 that she received a multiple sclerosis diagnosis in the 1990s. She initially noticed symptoms while filming One From The Heart and Tootsie.

She discussed her condition in her memoir Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, which she wrote in 2006. “MS is a sneaky disease,” she wrote in an extract for PEOPLE. “Like some of my lovers, it appears at inconvenient times and then disappears. It would take physicians nearly 20 years to determine what was wrong. They mentioned MS occasionally, but all of the testing came back clean. The symptoms would subside, and I would eventually forget about it.

Gossip about her condition before she went public harmed her career. “Whatever this MS was, the industry wanted no part of it,” she had written. “Initially, I was horrified. Whatever was going on in my body had been going on for several years. It never disrupted my work. Then I began to believe that the job offers had vanished because I was a terrible performer. The combination of strange ailments, doubts about my acting talent, and the reality of being an ‘aging’ actor was challenging.

Garr led the Women Against MS program and served as a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. She decreased the number of productions she performed in before retiring from acting in 2011.

“Slowing down is not in my nature, but I have to,” she stated in an interview with Brain & Life Magazine in 2005. “Stress and anxiety and all those high-tension things are not good for MS.”

Garr married John O’Neill in 1993. Together, they adopted Molly. The couple separated in 1996.

Her daughter Molly O’Neil (30) and grandson Tyryn (6) survive her.