38 Facts About Teri Garr

Terry Ann Garr, known as Teri Garr, was an American actress.

Teri Garr received nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her performance in Tootsie, playing a struggling actress who loses the soap opera role of a female hospital administrator to her male friend and acting coach.

Teri Garr was the third child of a comedic-actor father and a studio costumier mother.

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

Teri Garr had her breakthrough appearing in the episode Assignment: Earth of Star Trek in 1968.

Teri Garr later acted in films such as Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours, Let It Ride, Dumb and Dumber, Pret-a-Porter, Michael, and Ghost World.

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

Teri Garr retired from acting in 2011 and died in 2024.

Terry Ann Teri Garr was born in Los Angeles, California, on December 11,1944.

Teri Garr spent her early years in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, and Lakewood, Ohio, before her family settled in Los Angeles.

Teri Garr's father was of Irish descent and her maternal grandparents were Austrian immigrants.

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

Teri Garr later recalled changing her first name to "Teri" on the advice of a numerologist, who said she would be unsuccessful if she had repeating letters in her first and last names.

In 1966, Teri Garr made one appearance on Batman.

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

Teri Garr appeared in a string of highly successful films in the mid-to-late 1970s, including a supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola's thriller The Conversation.

In 1978, Teri Garr appeared off-Broadway in a production of One Crack Out by Canadian playwright David French, playing the wife of Charlie, a pool hustler in Toronto.

Teri Garr then appeared in the comedy Mr Mom as the wife of Michael Keaton's character, followed by a supporting role in Martin Scorsese's After Hours.

Teri Garr hosted Saturday Night Live three times, and was a frequent visitor on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, appearing over 40 times.

Teri Garr had several prominent dramatic roles on television in the 1980s, starring opposite Donald Sutherland in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, in the parody miniseries Fresno, and opposite Ellen Burstyn in an adaptation of the play Pack of Lies, which earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special.

In 1989, Teri Garr appeared in Let It Ride, opposite Dreyfuss.

Teri Garr's career began to slow in the late 1990s after a neurologist informed her that symptoms she had been experiencing for many years were those of multiple sclerosis.

Teri Garr provided the voice of Mary McGinnis, Terry McGinnis's mother, in Batman Beyond.

Teri Garr returned to the stage in the fall of 2000, appearing in numerous off-Broadway performances of The Vagina Monologues opposite Sanaa Lathan and Julianna Margulies.

Teri Garr subsequently had minor supporting roles in the Christmas comedy film Unaccompanied Minors, and the independent comedies Expired and Kabluey.

In 2006, Teri Garr published an autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, which details her career and health struggles after her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

Teri Garr appeared on The Moth Radio Hour broadcast of December 9,2009, to tell a humorous reminiscence, "Wake Up Call".

Teri Garr appeared at the 19th Annual Race to Erase MS event in 2012.

In 2019, it was revealed Teri Garr had retired from acting in 2011.

In 1993, Teri Garr married building contractor John O'Neil, and that same year, in November, they adopted daughter Molly O'Neil.

In March 1988, Teri Garr was arrested for trespassing in Mercury, Nevada, during a protest against nuclear weapons testing in the area.

Teri Garr participated in events for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization.

In October 2002, Teri Garr confirmed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

In interviews, Teri Garr said that she first started noticing symptoms while she was in New York filming Tootsie around 1982.

In November 2005, Teri Garr was honored as the society's Ambassador of the Year.

Teri Garr died from complications of multiple sclerosis at her home in Los Angeles surrounded by family and friends, on October 29,2024, at the age of 79.

Teri Garr is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Hollywood Hills, California.

Teri Garr was a first class actor and comedian and a lovely human being.