Melinda Dillon, Actress in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'A Christmas Story,' Dies at 83 [View all]
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Melinda Dillon, who received supporting Oscar nominations for her turns in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Absence of Malice and portrayed the doting mom in the holiday perennial A Christmas Story, died Jan. 9, her family announced. She was 83.
Right out of the gate, Dillon earned a Tony nomination and Theatre World award in 1963 for her debut performance on Broadway as the childlike wife Honey in the original production of Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Later, the Arkansas native played two characters opposite David Carradine — Woody Guthrie’s first wife, Mary, and a dark-haired folk singer named Memphis Sue — in the biopic Bound for Glory (1976), directed by Hal Ashby; was a lesbian hockey wife in George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (1977); and portrayed John Lithgow’s wife in the family film Harry and the Hendersons (1987).
Her big-screen résumé also included Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T. (1978), as the girlfriend/wife of a Teamster played by Sylvester Stallone; Barbra Streisand’s The Prince of Tides (1991), as the suicidal sister of Nick Nolte’s character; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), as the wife of a philandering quiz show host (Philip Baker Hall).
She was married to late actor Richard Libertini from 1963 until their 1978 divorce, and they had a son.
In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Dillon portrayed Jillian Guiler, the single mother who heads to Devils Tower with her next-door neighbor (Richard Dreyfuss) in search of her 3-year-old son, who’s been abducted by aliens through the kitchen doggy door. Ashby had recommended her to Spielberg for the part, and she was hired just days before filming began.
Read more: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/melinda-dillon-dead-close-encounters-christmas-story-1235317335/
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