Arkansas-born Oscar-nominated actress Melinda Dillon has died at the age of 83. The actress passed back on January 9th with the announcement only being released today.
Dillon received supporting Oscar nominations for her work as a single mother with an alien-abducted son in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and as a suicidal Catholic woman in Sydney Pollack’s “Absence of Malice”
On film, she had an interesting career. She and John Lithgow played the central couple in the Bigfoot family film “Harry and the Hendersons,” she was a lesbian hockey wife in George Roy Hill’s “Slap Shot,” and played two characters in Hal Ashby’s “Bound for Glory”.
She was also the sweet mother of Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) in the holiday perennial “A Christmas Story,” was Sylvester Stallone’s girlfriend in Norman Jewison’s “F.I.S.T.,” was Nick Nolte’s suicidal sister in Barbra Streisand’s “The Prince of Tides,” and was the wife of Philip Baker Hall’s philandering quiz show host in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”.
Other film credits include “The Muppet Movie,” “Songwriter,” “Sioux City,” “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,” “How to Make an American Quilt” and “Reign Over Me” along with guest appearances on shows like “The Jeffersons” and “Picket Fences”.
She also earned a Tony nomination for her debut performance in the original stage production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”.
Source: THR
