Melinda Dillon, the two-time Oscar-nominee, and star of the beloved movie A Christmas Story, has died at the age of 83.
Her death was announced through an obituary stating that she died on Jan. 9, however no cause of death was provided.
Long before she played the role of Mother Parker in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story, Dillon had already been nominated for a Tony Award for the original 1962 production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway, as well as two Oscars—the first for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the second for the 1981 film Absence of Malice.
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The actress also received a Golden Globe nomination for playing Woody Guthrie’s wife Mary in singer’s 1976 biopic Bound for Glory.
She also had notable parts in the movies Harry and the Hendersons, The Prince of Tides, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and Magnolia.
Dillon married actor Richard Libertini, whom she met at the Second City in Chicago where she got her first acting break, but the pair divorced in 1978. She is survived by their son, Richard Libertini Jr.
Tributes poured in from celebrities who had worked with her or had admired her work.
