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    Who is Teri Garr? (Young Frankenstein Star): Age, Marriage, Movie Career, Illness, Death

    Tr RonaldBy Updated:No Comments5 Mins Read

    Teri Garr has died at the age of 79 years. She is best known for comedic work in movies like 1974’s young Frankenstein and 1982’s Tootsie for which she was nominated for an academy award.

    Teri Garr Age

    Teri was born Terri Ann Garr on December 11, 1944. At the time of her death she was 79 years of age. According to the PEOPLE  Both her parents worked in show business. Her father was a vaudeville performer, while her mother was a Rockette who eventually worked in costume production. The family, which also included her two older brothers, moved to New Jersey before settling in Los Angeles. Garr’s father died when she was 11. “She put two kids through school,” Garr told the Los Angeles Times of her mom in 2008. “I have one brother who is a surgeon, there’s me, and my other brother builds boats. She was in wardrobe. She was a costumer at the studio. She would always say, ‘We’re still alive. . . .’” 

    Teri Garr Marriage and Relationships

    In the early 1980s, Garr was in a seven-year relationship with film executive Roger Birnbaum. After separating from Birnbaum, Garr was in a seven-year relationship with David Kipper, a physician, to whom she was introduced by Carrie Fisher. In 1993, Garr married building contractor John O’Neil, and that same year, in November, they were present when their adopted daughter Molly O’Neil was born. The couple divorced in 1996.

    Teri Garr Movie Career

     The PEOPLE reported that Garr started training as a dancer, with an emphasis on ballet. She dropped out of college to move to New York to focus on acting, where she studied at the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. Her earliest projects allowed her to use her dancing skills. She appeared in six movies starring Elvis Presley, including 1964’s Viva Las Vegas. She also appeared on TV variety shows as a dancer.

    “I got sick and fed up of dancing in the chorus,” she told Roger Ebert in 1980. “I trained for 10 years. I finally asked myself, ‘Why am I not in the front? I didn’t study all those years to be in the back and get no money.’” 

    Her first speaking role came in the The Monkees 1968 film Head. It was written by Jack Nicholson, whom she’d met in acting class. That same year, she appeared in an episode of Star Trek, “Assignment: Earth,” which was her first major speaking role. She also became a regular on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1972. 

    Soon Garr began to find major success. In 1974, she appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s thriller The Conversation. That same year, she starred in the Mel Brooks horror comedy Young Frankenstein as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant a role she secured with some help from her mom.

    “My mother was the wardrobe woman on Young Frankenstein,” she told PBS in 2012. “I asked her if they’d finished casting, and she said she didn’t know.” Garr asked her agent to get her an audition, and after four rounds of auditions, she was cast. “It was unbelievable.” Her time on Sonny & Cher helped her nail the role. “I got the German accent from Cher’s wig lady,” she revealed. 

    Teri Garr Illness

    According to the PEOPLE, Garr revealed in 2002 that during the 1990s she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She first began noticing symptoms while filming One From the Heart and Tootsie. She released a memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, in 2006, where she opened up about her illness. “MS is a sneaky disease,” she wrote in an excerpt published by PEOPLE. “Like some of my boyfriends, it has a tendency to show up at the most awkward times and then disappear entirely. It would take over 20 years for doctors to figure out what was wrong. Sometimes they mentioned MS, but all the tests came back clear. Then the symptoms would fade away and I’d forget about it, sort of.”  Garr became a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and national chair for the Society’s Women Against MS program. She limited the number of projects she appeared in and retired from acting in 2011.

    Teri Garr Death

    Teri Garr, known for her memorable roles in Tootsie, Young Frankenstein, and Friends, passed away at 79 in Los Angeles due to complications related to multiple sclerosis. Her publicist Heidi Schaeffer told Associated Press that Garr was ‘surrounded by family and friends’ at the time of her passing. She is survived by her daughter Molly O’Neil, 30, and grandson Tyryn, 6.

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