Teri Garr

Teri Ann Garr (born December 11, 1944) is an American former actress, dancer, and comedian.

She has frequently appeared in comedic roles throughout her career, which spans four decades and includes over 140 credits in film and television.

Her accolades include an Academy Award nomination, a BAFTA Award nomination, and a National Board of Review Award.

Born in Lakewood, Ohio, Garr was raised in North Hollywood, California.

She is the third child of a comedic-actor father and a studio costumer mother.

In her youth, Garr trained in ballet and other forms of dance.

Teri Ann Garr was born on December 11, 1944, in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb west of Cleveland.

Her father, Eddie Garr (born Edward Leo Gonnoud), was a vaudeville performer, comedian, and actor, whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road.

Her mother, Phyllis Lind Garr (born Emma Schmotzer), was a dancer, a Rockette, wardrobe mistress, and model.

Her father was of Irish descent and her maternal grandparents were Austrian immigrants.

Garr has two older brothers, Ed and Phil.

She spent her early life in Cleveland, and the family briefly relocated to New Jersey before settling in Los Angeles, California.

When Garr was 11, her father died in Los Angeles of a heart attack.

She recalled that his death "left us bereft, without any kind of income. And I saw my mother be this incredibly strong, creative woman who put three kids through college — one of my brothers is a surgeon. Any kind of lessons we wanted, we had to have scholarships or sweep the floors. It had to be free. And so we always had to try harder. That was instilled in me very early."

During her youth, Garr expressed interest in dancing and trained extensively in ballet.

"I'd go for three, four hours a day; my feet would be bleeding", she recalled.

"I'd take buses all over the city just to go to the best dancing schools. You could just stand there and be quiet and beat yourself up, push the body."

Garr graduated from North Hollywood High School, and attended San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge) for two years before dropping out and relocating to New York City to further pursue acting.

In New York, she studied at the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

Early in her career, she was credited as Terri Garr, Terry Garr, Teri Hope, or Terry Carr.

She began her career as a teenager with small roles in television and film in the early 1960s, including appearances as a dancer in six Elvis Presley musicals.

After spending two years attending college, Garr left Los Angeles, and studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City.

Her movie debut was as an extra in A Swingin' Affair (1963).

During her senior year, she auditioned for the cast of the Los Angeles road company production of West Side Story, where she met one of the most important people in her early career, David Winters, who became her friend, dance teacher, and mentor.

Winters cast her in many of his early movies and projects.

Garr began as a background go-go dancer in uncredited roles in youth-oriented films and TV shows choreographed by Winters, including Pajama Party (a beach party film), the T.A.M.I. Show, Shindig!, Shivaree, Hullabaloo, Movin' with Nancy, and six Elvis Presley features (many of which were also choreographed by Winters, including Presley's most profitable film, Viva Las Vegas).

When asked in a magazine interview about how she landed jobs in so many Presley films, Garr answered, "One of the dancers in the road show of West Side Story (David Winters) started to choreograph movies, and whatever job he got, I was one of the girls he'd hire. So he was chosen to do Viva Las Vegas. That was my first movie."

She often appeared on television during this time, performing as a go-go dancer on several musical variety shows, along with friend Toni Basil, such as Shindig! and Hullabaloo.

In 1966, Garr made one appearance on Batman (episode seven, uncredited).

Her self-described "big break" as an actress was landing a role in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" after which she said, "I finally started to get real acting work."

In 1968, she appeared in both The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. and was in two episodes of It Takes a Thief.

Her first speaking role in a motion picture was a brief appearance as a damsel in distress in The Monkees' film Head (1968), written by Jack Nicholson; Garr got the role after meeting Nicholson in an acting class.

Garr gained prominence for her roles in Francis Ford Coppola's thriller The Conversation (1974), Mel Brooks' comedy Young Frankenstein (1974), and Steven Spielberg's science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

She earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Sydney Pollack comedy Tootsie (1982).

She reunited with Coppola in a role in his musical One from the Heart (1982), starred opposite Michael Keaton in the family film Mr. Mom (1983), and acted in Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours (1985).

Garr's quick wit and charming banter made her a sought after guest on late-night shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.

In the 1990s, she appeared in two films by Robert Altman: The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), followed by supporting roles in Michael (1996) and Ghost World (2001).

She also appeared on television as Phoebe Abbott in three episodes of the sitcom Friends (1997–98).

In 2002, Garr announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the symptoms of which had affected her ability to perform beginning in the 1990s.

She retired from acting in 2011.