Teri Garr as she appeared in the movie Young Frankenstein, 1974. Photo: Getty Images
Academy Award-nominated comedy actress Teri Garr’s sunny personality lit up the screen in films such as Young Frankenstein and Tootsie. Born in Ohio in 1944 to show business parents — father Eddie, was a vaudeville performer and Broadway actor and mother Phyllis danced at New York’s Radio City Music Hall — Garr attended college in Los Angeles before she moved to New York City to pursue a career in ballet and then in acting, studying at the famed Actors Studio in Manhattan. One of her earliest credits included work as a background dancer in Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas. After roles on Star Trek and Batman, Garr was cast by Mel Brooks as a German lab assistant in the 1974 film Young Frankenstein. Her Oscar nod came in 1982, playing opposite Dustin Hoffman in the gender-swap comedy Tootsie. In 2002 Garr announced that she had been diagnosed with MS after experiencing symptoms for some two decades, and she became an advocate for MS research and treatment. Garr died on October 29 aged 79. — ODT, Agencies
