Actress and comedian
Born: September 20, 1929;
Died: May 23, 2015
Anne Meara, who has died aged 85, was an actress and comedian whose work with her husband Jerry Stiller helped launch a 60-year career in film and TV. She appeared in television shows such as Sex and the City and Rhoda and also appeared in a number of films with her son, the actor Ben Stiller.
As Stiller & Meara, Meara and her husband appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and other programmes in the 1960s and won awards for the radio and TV commercials they made together. Meara also had a long-standing role in the soap opera All My Children and recurring appearances on Rhoda, Alf, and Sex and the City from 2002 until 2004. She shared the screen with her son in 2006's Night at the Museum and had small roles in two of his other films Reality Bites (1994) and Zoolander (2001).
Born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Irish-Catholic parents, Meara met Stiller at a talent agency in 1953 when he was looking for a comedy partner. They were married the following year and began appearing on television together. The act was based around them bickering with each other but loving each other really.
Away from comedy, Meara worked as a serious actress too. On stage, she appeared in As You Like It and as one of the witches in Macbeth. She also had a number of film roles including the mother of one of the cloned boys in The Boys from Brazil (1978) in which Laurence Olivier played Nazi-hunter, Ezra Lieberman. She was also one of the teachers in Alan Parker's original film of Fame in 1980. But it was comedy that brought her fame
She was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role on Archie Bunker's Place, along with two other Emmy nods, most recently in 1997 for her guest-starring role on Homicide. She won a Writers Guild Award for co-writing the 1983 TV movie The Other Woman.
She also wrote a play called After-Play (1995), a comedy about couples going to a restaurant after a night at the theatre, which had an off-Broadway run.
A family statement said: "Anne's memory lives on in the hearts of daughter Amy, son Ben, her grandchildren, her extended family and friends, and the millions she entertained as an actress, writer and comedienne."
Besides her husband and son, Meara is survived by her daughter, Amy, and several grandchildren.
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