Representatives of the actress Susan Tyrrell have reported that the actress died Saturday, at the age of 65. The daughter of a William Morris agent, Tyrrell began acting in her teens and made her way to New York, where her theater credits, on and off Broadway, included Cactus Flower, Lanford Wilson’s The Rimers Of Eldritch, and Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real. It was Williams who paid her the ultimate backhanded compliment, “My favorite actors are 50-percent male and 50-percent female, and you, my dear, are neither.”
Tyrrell made her movie debut in the 1971 Gregory Peck Western Shoot Out and appeared in such early-’70s obscurities as The Steagle and the film version of Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long Up It Looks Like Up To Me, before landing the role of Oma, a sharp-tongued barfly who briefly hooks up with a washed-up boxer (Stacy Keach), in John Huston’s 1972 comeback film, Fat City. Her flamboyant performance earned the then-unknown actress an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She didn’t win, but she put earn herself a spot on the map as a go-to character actress for mean drunks and nuts, as well as one of those eccentric performers who seem to bring their own one-person experimental theater troupe to any project.
