Marian Seldes

Marian Seldes, who has died after a long illness aged 86, was an award-winning actress who became a teacher of Kevin Kline and Robin Williams and a muse to the playwright Edward Albee. She also broke the Guinness world record for most consecutive performances on the stage.

She made her Broadway debut in 1947 in a production of Medea, starring the versatile actress Judith Anderson, and later appeared in hits such as Equus and Deathtrap. Her most recent Broadway outing was in Terrence McNally's Deuce in 2007, starring opposite Angela Lansbury.

She was nominated for a Tony five times, for her performances in A Delicate Balance, Father's Day, Deathtrap, Ring Round The Moon and Dinner At Eight. She won in 1967 for A Delicate Balance and won her second Tony in 2010 for lifetime achievement.

Her collaborations with Albee included Three Tall Women, which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for drama, The Play About The Baby, Tiny Alice and Father's Day.

"I think I'm as ambitious as any actress can be, but I don't ask," she said in 1995. "I have a theory that it's better for me if I wait and either the director or playwright chooses. The best opportunities in my career have come that way, and all my opportunities with Edward Albee have come that way."

She moved easily from role to role, though, from Chekhov's Ivanov to Peter Shaffer's Equus, from Ira Levin's Deathtrap to Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day and Tina Howe's Painting Churches. Her off-Broadway credits also included The Ginger Man and Painting Churches.

Seldes' reliability and professionalism sealed her place in the Guinness Book of World Records after playing every performance during the run of Deathtrap from 1978 to 1982, a total of 1,809 performances. Her record as most durable actress has since been broken by Catherine Russell, who logged more than 11,000 performances in the off-Broadway production of Perfect Crime.

Seldes, who was born in New York and was the daughter of the author and journalist Gilbert Seldes, was twice married, to novelist and playwright Julian Claman, a union that ended in divorce in 1961, and then to playwright Garson Kanin.

From 1969 to 1992, she served on the faculty of the Juilliard School, teaching the craft of acting to such pupils as Kline, Williams, Patti LuPone, Laura Linney, Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Reeve.

Seldes also acted in films, in Mona Lisa Smile, Home Alone 3 and Celebrity. On television she appeared in Nurse Jackie and played Candice Bergen's aunt in Murphy Brown and Mr Big's mother in Sex And The City. She also wrote two books: a memoir, The Bright Lights: A Theatre Life, and a novel, Time Together.

Seldes, a slim and elegant woman who often wore her hair tied back, studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighbourhood Playhouse and made her professional debut at the age of 17 in Robinson Jeffers' Medea, with Anderson. Her other Broadway credits included Crime And Punishment, The Chalk Garden, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Oliver Hailey's Father's Day, for which she won a Drama Desk Award, Arnold Wesker's The Merchant and Kanin's A Gift of Time.

In 1995, she was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame, marking 50 years in the profession, but she missed the ceremony because (typically) she was on tour with Three Tall Women in Los Angeles.

She died peacefully at her home in New York after an extended illness. Her brother Timothy Seldes said: "She was an extraordinary woman whose great love of the theatre, teaching and acting was surpassed only by her deep love for her family."

She was pre-deceased by her husband Garson Kanin, who died in 1999.