Two-time Academy Award nominee Melinda Dillon, best known for A Christmas Story and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, has died at the age of 83.
On Friday, it was tragically announced that the beloved actress had passed away on January 9. The family has not yet disclosed what caused her death.
From Painting to Performance: Melinda Dillon’s Creative Journey
Every year, audiences eagerly anticipate watching A Christmas Story, a heartwarming and nostalgic story of a young boy who dreams of receiving a toy gun for the holidays. Its release in 1983 marked the emergence of Dillon as an actress portraying mothers in films. As time passes on, this movie continues to be one that is watched around Christmastime with eager anticipation by viewers everywhere.
Before then, she was nominated for two Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actress. In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dillon portrays a mother desperately searching for her abducted son from aliens. In Absence of Malice, she plays Paul Newman’s companion and is emotionally distressed by a journalist’s coverage about her losing a baby.
Dillon has appeared in other movies such as Slap Shot, Harry and the Henderson, Bound for Glory, and episodes of the TV series Judging Amy and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
Prior to entering the film industry, Dillon was nominated for a Tony Award in the original cast of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? On Broadway in the 1960s.
Biography of Melinda Dillon
Melinda Dillon was born on October 13, 1939, and her artistic career began in the sixties and seventies of the last century. Her first appearances were in the series, Bonanza and The Jefferson.
She was married to stage actor Richard Libertini for over 12 years before they divorced in 1978, and they have one son, Richard Jr. And the actress never married again.
Dillon retired from acting in 2007 and her last film was Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler. That year, she also appeared in three episodes of the TNT drama, however, her retirement disappointed her fans, and she has not appeared since that period, which made her fans constantly wonder if she was alive.
