Jill Clayburgh: 1944 - 20105 November 2010   
   7:53 PM, PDT | IMDb News   
       
   Jill Clayburgh, the Oscar-nominated actress whose portrayal of suddenly single   
   women in the 1970s helped define feminism in movies and reshape the role of   
   leading lady, died today at her home in Lakeville, Conneticut; she was 66.   
       
   A stage actress who started appearing onscreen in the 70s, she suddenly became   
   the "It Girl" -- or rather, "It Woman" -- with her acclaimed performance as an   
   upper-class Manhattan wife suddenly left by her husband in the comedy-drama An   
   Unmarried Woman. For a brief time one of Hollywood's most recognizable   
   actresses in both comedy and drama, her career took a rapid decline in the 80s   
   before she resuscitated her career with a number of television and film roles.   
   Still, despite her career ups and downs, she remained one of the most   
   important actresses of the 70s, alongside Jane Fonda, Glenda Jackson, Diane   
   Keaton, and the young Meryl Streep (with whom she was friends) -- women whose   
   films were marked by their portrayals of strong, independent women who didn't   
   need a man to complete their lives and were prepared to take a stand by doing   
   so.   
       
   Born in New York City to a manufacturing executive father and a mother who was   
   the production secretary for theatrical producer David Merrick, Clayburgh had   
   a privileged Upper East Side upbringing, attending the noted Brearley Academy   
   and then Sarah Lawrence College. After joining the Charles Street Repertory   
   Theater in Boston, she worked primarily onstage, moving to Broadway for such   
   shows as Pippin and The Rothschilds.   
       
   After sporadic film and TV appearances (including a stint on the soap opera   
   Search for Tomorrow), Clayburgh nabbed her first big role in 1972's Portnoy's   
   Complaint. Roles in TV shows such as Medical Center, Maude, and The Rockford   
   Files followed (she received an Emmy nomination for the 1975 TV movie   
   Hustling), before she essayed the role of Carole Lombard opposite James   
   Brolin's Clark Gable in the critically lambasted Gable and Lombard (1976).   
       
   The lavish biopic was soundly drubbed and might have marked the end of her   
   career had it not been for a number of acclaimed performances and box office   
   hits in rapid succession. Clayburgh earned acclaimed opposite Peter Falk in   
   the TV cancer drama Griffin and Phoenix: A Love Story (1976) and that same   
   year co-starred opposite Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in the blockbuster hit   
   comedy Silver Streak. She held her own against two other high-profile, wildly   
   popular leading men--Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson--in the football   
   comedy Semi-Tough (1977) before landing the role that would make her a   
   superstar of the decade: Erica in Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman.   
       
   The story of a well-to-do wife and mother who is left by her husband for a   
   younger woman, and attempts to reclaim her identity as a single woman in a   
   world marked by the rise of feminism, the film was a lightning rod for many of   
   the issues of the late 70s, from divorce to sexual liberation. With its   
   message that it was okay not to be married, the film was a box office and   
   critical hit, winning Clayburgh the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film   
   Festival. An Unmarried Woman would receive three Oscar nominations, including   
   Best Picture and Actress, but lost both awards to Vietnam-themed dramas The   
   Deer Hunter and Coming Home (Jane Fonda was the Best Actress winner).   
       
   Anointed as the screen's quintessential liberated woman, Clayburgh followed   
   that film in 1979 with two wildly disparate roles, as an opera singer who   
   seduces her 15 year old son in Bernardo Bertolucci's Luna, and as a slightly   
   ditzy kindergarten teacher who falls in love with a recently divorced Burt   
   Reynolds in the comedy Starting Over. The former film was reviled by critics,   
   while the latter earner her a second Academy Award nomination (surprisingly,   
   she received Golden Globe nominations for both films).   
       
   The early 80s saw Clayburgh play two more independent women in the comedies   
   It's My Turn and First Monday in October, as well as a Valium addict in the   
   adaptation of the bestselling memoir I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can. But as the   
   80s came under the influence of the Reagan administration and lost interest in   
   the burgeoning feminist movement, roles for Clayburgh became less easy to   
   attain, and a string of film flops followed throughout the decade. Roles in   
   low-budget movies and telefilms followed, though it was through a number of   
   television appearances in the late 90s and early 2000s that Clayburgh   
   revitalized her career on the small screen: there were acclaimed but failed   
   sitcoms Everything's Relative and Leap of Faith, and a well-received turn as   
   the mother of Calista Flockhart's titular character in the hit show Ally   
   McBeal.   
       
   After appearances on The Practice and Nip/Tuck (the latter earning her a   
   second Emmy nomination), she co-starred in the TV series Dirty Sexy Money   
   opposite Donald Sutherland as the matriarch of a wealthy New York family. In   
   the mid-2000s Clayburgh also starred on Broadway in Richard Greenberg's A   
   Naked Girl on the Appian Way and in the 2006 revival of Barefoot in the Park.   
   Her most recent roles include the upcoming comedy-drama Love and Other Drugs,   
   as well as next year's Bridesmaids.   
       
   Clayburgh married acclaimed playwright David Rabe (Hurlyburly, Streamers) in   
   1979; she is survived by Rabe and their daughter, actress Lily Rabe, who will   
   be appearing opposite Al Pacino, with whom Clayburgh was involved in the early   
   70s, in the new Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice, which has   
   currently been delayed.   
       
   - Mark Englehart   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.56   
    * Origin: NCS BBS -Houma, LA- (1:3828/7)