Young Frankenstein star Teri Garr has passed away at age 79 after a long health battle.
Teri died on Tuesday (October 29) in Los Angeles after a lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis. The comic actress and singer was Oscar-nominated for 'Tootsie' and starred in Young Frankenstein as Inga.
Though Teri had an extensive list of acting credits on her roster including TV shows and films from across the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. The actress first announced that she had been diagnosed with MS in 2002 and suffered an aneurysm in 2006.
Teri played the saucy assistant in Mel Brooks’ 1974 Young Frankenstein' who famously greeted Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frederick Frankenstein with the memorable “Vould you like to have a roll in ze hay?”
She also starred in Friends when she played Phoebe Abbot, the estranged birth mother of Phoebe Buffay, in three episodes in 1997 and 1998.
The actress once explained to the A.V. Club in a 2008 interview why she was often cast as the “long-suffering wife” in films such as Mr. Mom. She told the publication: “If there’s ever a woman who’s smart, funny, or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don’t write that.
"They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them. Those are the kind of parts I play, and the kind of parts that there are for me in this world. In this life.”
She also hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times and appeared frequently on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” as well as “Late Night With David Letterman.”
She published an autobiography about her life titled 'Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood' in 2006. Teri is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neil, and grandson Tyryn.
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