Actress Melinda Dillon, a two-time Oscar nominee best known for the movies “A Christmas Story” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” has died, according to a cremation service in Long Beach, California. She was 83.
Dillon died January 9, according to Neptune Society, the cremation provider. No cause of death was given. Her death became widely known on Friday.
She played the mother in “A Christmas Story,” a nostalgic look back at a boy longing for a toy rifle. It was released in 1983 and went on to find an annual holiday audience on video and TV.
Before that, she scored Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress twice. In Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters,” she searches for her little boy after aliens abduct him. And in “Absence of Malice,” she plays Paul Newman’s friend tormented by a reporter’s coverage of her abortion.
She also appeared in “Slap Shot,” “Harry and the Hendersons,” and “Bound for Glory” and episodes of TV series “Judging Amy” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.”
Her death was reported by the Neptune Society.
Dillon is celebrated for her role as Jillian Guiler in Steven Speilberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), for which she earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actress. She received a second supporting actress nomination in 1982 for her role as Teresa in Sydney Pollack’s “Absence of Malice” (1981). In 1977, she received a Golden Globe nomination for acting debut in a motion picture for Hal Ashby’s “Bound for Glory” (1976).
Dillon’s career began as a stage actor and improvisational comedian in Chicago’s “The Second City.” In Edward Albee’s 1962 original “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf,” the actor played Honey and received a Tony nomination for featured actress in a play. She also acted in “Paul Sill’s Story Theater” and “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water’s Running.”Click to cintinue reading