American actress Melinda Dillon lived from October 13, 1939, to January 9, 2023. She was nominated for a 1963 Tony Award for her performance in the first Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Production on Broadway, she received nominations for the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind’s Jillian Guiler and Absence of Malice’s Teresa Perrone for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (1981).
She gained fame for playing Mother Parker in the cherished holiday film A Christmas Story (1983). Bound for Glory (1976), F.I.S.T. (1978), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), The Prince of Tides (1991), and Magnolia (1999), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, are some of her other cinematic appearances.
What is Melinda Dillon Net Worth Before Her Death?
American actress Melinda Dillon has a $3 million net worth. In October 1939, Melinda Dillon was born in Hope, Arkansas. From 1963 to 1978, she was married to Richard Lambertini.
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How Did Melinda Dillon Start Her Career?
She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her work as Honey in the original 1962 Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
Dillon also had roles in Paul Sill’s Story Theatre, and You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running. She starred in The Cry of Jazz, an influential short film on jazz music and Black culture, in 1959.
The April Fools, Dillon’s debut full-length picture, came out in 1969. She also had a career in television, most notably in a guest-starring part on the famous TV episode “A Lawman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One” of Bonanza in 1969. (Season 11).
She co-starred with David Carradine in the 1976 Woody Guthrie drama Bound for Glory, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Memphis Sue in the Best Female Acting Debut category.
For her performance as a mother whose child is kidnapped by aliens in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar the following year.
She appeared uncredited in The Muppet Movie the same year and co-starred with Paul Newman in the comedy Slap Shot. Four years later, Dillon was nominated for another Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work with Newman in the 1981 film Absence of Malice, in which she played a suicidal teacher.
Dillon’s most well-known performance was maybe that of Ralphie and Randy’s mother in Bob Clark’s 1983 film A Christmas Story. The young Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley) character and his quest for a Red Ryder BB rifle from Santa Claus are the subjects of several short stories and novels by Jean Shepherd that served as the basis for the movie.
Melinda Dillon was such a great actress, with a wonderful delicacy about her. She was a delight to direct in Prince of Tides. May she rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/CuLJRlAP93
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) February 4, 2023
Dillon and John Lithgow starred together in the Bigfoot comedy Harry and the Hendersons four years later. Throughout the 1990s, she remained active on stage and in movies, playing parts in the drama How to Make an American Quilt, the low-budget Lou Diamond Phillips thriller Sioux City, and the Barbra Streisand drama The Prince of Tides.
She played Rose Gator, the estranged spouse of terminally ill television game show presenter Jimmy Gator, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia (Philip Baker Hall). She made a guest appearance in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode “Blood” in 2005.
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Emma is a Master of Science candidate at the California Institute of Technology. Since approximately four years ago, she has been a freelance writer, producing content for newspapers, magazines, blogs, and the internet