Jill Clayburgh, the sophisticated Hollywood and Broadway actress known for portrayals of empowered women in a career spanning five decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated role of a divorcee exploring life after marriage in the 1978 film "An Unmarried Woman," has died. She was 66.
Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said Clayburgh died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Lakeville, Conn., after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said she dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."
Clayburgh, alongside such peers as Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine and Jane Fonda, helped to usher in a new era for actresses in Hollywood by playing women who were confident and capable yet not completely flawless. Her dramatic turn as a divorcee exploring her sexuality after 16 years of marriage in "An Unmarried Woman" earned Clayburgh her first Oscar nod.
"There was practically nothing for women to do on the screen in the 1950s and 1960s," Clayburgh said in an interview with The Associated Press while promoting "An Unmarried Woman" in 1978. "Sure, Marilyn Monroe was great, but she had to play a one-sided character, a vulnerable sex object. It was a real fantasy."
Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said Clayburgh died Friday surrounded by her family at her home in Lakeville, Conn., after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He said she dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human."
"There was practically nothing for women to do on the screen in the 1950s and 1960s," Clayburgh said in an interview with The Associated Press while promoting "An Unmarried Woman" in 1978. "Sure, Marilyn Monroe was great, but she had to play a one-sided character, a vulnerable sex object. It was a real fantasy."
The next year, Clayburgh was again nominated for an Academy Award for "Starting Over," a comedy about a divorced man, played by Burt Reynolds, who falls in love but can't get over his ex-wife. For the next 30 years, Clayburgh steadily appeared in films and on stage and television, often effortlessly moving between comedic and dramatic roles.
Besides appearing in such movies as "I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can," "Silver Streak" and "Running With Scissors," Clayburgh's Broadway credits included Noel Coward's "Design for Living," the original production of Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers," and the Tony Award-winning musicals "Pippin" and "The Rothschilds."
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