A comedic genius who was ahead of his time

In the 1982 comedy classic TootsieTeri Garr plays Sandy Lester, a struggling actress and close friend of Dustin Hoffman's Michael Dorsey. Between her chosen career and her many bad choices with men, she has been conditioned to be the doormat of life. In an early scene, she admits that she was trapped in Michael's bathroom for half an hour during a party without anyone noticing, and then admits that yes, everyone seems to be having a good time. When Michael invites her out for dinner later, she somehow apologizes to him. The big soap opera role he gets while posing as a woman was something Sandy wanted, but when she shows up at the audition, the casting director takes one look at her and won't even let her read.

On the one hand, Garr's performance in this film – for which she received her only Oscar nomination – is hard to miss

– and imagine if anyone ever turned her down from an audition, or that she ever had to be so meek. In a role that could so easily be thankless and shrill, in which Sandy is nothing more than a self-loathing, unintentional obstacle between Michael and the romance he really wants, Garr is a force of nature – so funny and so vulnerable that it's hard to believe can hardly wait. I can't help but love Sandy despite (or because of?) her numerous neuroses. She lost to her co-star Jessica Lange, although Garr delivers the far more memorable performance. But Lange was nominated for both supporting actress and lead actress this year, and there was no way her excellent work in the film could be recognized Franceswanted to hit Meryl Streep

Sophie's choice That's why the voters presented her with the sponsorship trophy as a consolation prize.On the other hand, although Garr, who died this week at the age of 79 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis, had a far more successful career than Sandy, it never quite panned out in the way that her amazing talent should have. She had some success as a leading actress in films in the early to mid-1980s, but her big hits were usually projects that starred someone else. Mr. MomFor example, as the title suggests, “The Movie” was more about Garr's on-screen husband Michael Keaton struggling as a househusband (a first in 1983!) than her character's rocky return to work. The films now revolve around Garr, such as the musical by Francis Ford Coppola

tended to come and go without much audience attention.

Editor's Tips She was a unique talent, but in a way that was almost too specific for her own good. If no one else does exactly what you do – jaded, neurotic and sexy, but also strangely innocent – that means no one else prefers you in such roles. This also means that it will be much harder to get such parts. There was something timeless and something untimely about Garr. In the sixties she made many episodic guest appearances on television, but she never achieved a breakthrough – the greatest success she achieved was a failed attempt Star TrekSpin-off in which she would have played the goofy secretary of the time traveler Gary Seven – and was later cast with characters who seemed like refugees from that decade. In the cult classic by Martin Scorsese

After hours For example, she plays Julie, a fragile waitress with a beehive haircut who dances to the Monkees' “Last Train to Clarksville.” (Shortly after, she appeared in a throwback video for the Zombies' hit “She's Not There,” and was strongly reminded of when the song had come out 22 years earlier.)Her big career breakthrough came in one of the greatest film years of all time, 1974, when she gave two completely different supporting performances. The more famous one is Mel Brooks'

Related content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srOd82nsWpsBut Garr also struck a nerve with her brief appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's film

in which she played Amy, the lover of Gene Hackman's surveillance expert Harry Caul and the only person who seems to understand him even a little: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWhFW021gwMOne performance is wonderfully cartoonish, the other completely buttoned-up, and both are indelible. Hollywood took notice, but still didn't quite know what to do with Garr's unbalanced energy. She spent a lot of time playing wives and mothers in other people's stories, sometimes with great success (although she knew that Richard Dreyfuss was right that aliens were real in this story). Close encounters of the third kind it's hard to watch Garr's work as his exasperated wife and not feel complete sympathy for her point of view), sometimes less so (she played third fiddle to George Burns and John Denver in the first part).

Oh God! Film).She steals every minute she's on screen

even when shared with both Hoffman and Bill Murray, like this incredible sequence where Sandy finally gets up the courage to confront Michael about all the lies she thinks he's told her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0pUtIIwGHoGarr received the Oscar nomination, had big hits in it and Mr. Mom and was an integral part The Tonight Show And

in the eighties. In some ways, talk shows proved to be the purest medium to capture all the things that made them so wonderful and distinctive. When she alternated between flirting with Letterman and getting frustrated with him, it was impossible to tell how much was a little and how much was the real Garr. But like Albert Brooks and several other Hall of Fame talk show guests, it became a masterful performance in its own right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9hXd7ve-9AHowever, her quick wit and verve never led to sustained commercial success. Garr's last studio film as a leading actor was quickly forgotten in 1992

. In 2002, she announced that she had been diagnosed with MS, suffered a brain aneurysm in 2007, and retired from acting a short time later. Trending stories The last decade and a half of Garr's career was spent primarily on television, including in a recurring role Friends this felt like a spiritual passing of the torch. In her portrayal of crazy masseuse and musician Phoebe Buffay, Lisa Kudrow was clearly paying homage to Garr. (In a statement to

Rolling Stone This week, Kudrow called Garr “a comedic acting genius who had, and continues to have, a huge influence on me.”) The connection between Kudrow's work on the hit '90s sitcom and Garr's film work in the '70s and '80s was so obvious, in fact, that viewers demanded Garr as Phoebe's mother. Although Phoebe's backstory suggested that her mother had died by suicide, the writers ultimately found the comedic pairing too adorable to pass up. They devised a workaround where Phoebe learns that she was adopted, allowing Garr to enter the narrative as Phoebe's birth mother and bring her endearing silliness to a new generation. If it felt bittersweet that another actor had become a superstar playing a role similar to the one that had made Garr less famous, it was also something of an acknowledgment of Garr's fleeting qualities did translate, both to another actor and to tens of millions