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Vale: Jill Clayburgh

Actress Jill Clayburgh, who recently starred as the matriarch in Dirty Sexy Money, has died aged 66.

Actress Jill Clayburgh, who recently starred as the matriarch in Dirty Sexy Money, has died aged 66.

She had suffered for 21 years from chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Best known as a feature film actress, Clayburgh had worked on stage and in television.

Her performance in An Unmarried Woman in 1978 drew one of her two Academy Award nominations. The other came for Starting Over (1979), in which she suffered emotional wounds resulting from the psychic uncertainties plaguing the character played by Burt Reynolds.

Other films included I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, It’s My Turn, Semi-Tough, Silver Streak, Portnoy’s Complaint, First Monday in October, Running with Scissors.

Clayburgh began acting as a teenager in Boston before winning parts on Broadway. On Broadway, she played in Noel Coward’s “Design for Living,” and in two musicals that won Tony Awards, “Pippin” and “The Rothschilds.”

On the small screen she appeared in the telemovie Hustling, The Rockford Files, Maude, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Nip / Tuck, Frasier and Law and Order.

She played opposite Donald Sutherland in Dirty Sexy Money.

Clayburgh, who also won two Emmy nominations during her career, had been working on a yet-to-be released movie.

After an interview in 1999, The Washington Post described her as a woman’s woman: “open, intimate, straight, smart, funny, confiding,” it said. She was “every woman’s idea of what she would like her best friend to be.”

Source: Washington Post

4 Responses

  1. A friend’s father died from this exact same illness. He had it for 24 years, it is amazing how long you can live with it. RIP, I always liked Jill’s performances, particularly in her breakout role in An Unmarried Woman.

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