Actress

Born: March 13, 1955

Died: June 8, 2017

Glenne HEADLY, who has died aged 62, following a pulmonary embolism, was probably best known for playing seemingly ditzy, squeaky-voiced characters in the likes of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) and Dick Tracy (1990), though the onscreen image belied a tough off-screen personality honed with Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf theatre company.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was her big film break, co-starring with Steve Martin and Michael Caine, who was not impressed that the third main role was going to a virtual unknown, though he soon changed his tune after meeting her.

Martin and Caine were a couple of conmen and Headly was the heiress they target. But the ending, as scripted did not work. It was completely reworked around Headly’s ability to do convincing accents and most of the ideas came from Headly herself. Her character turns the tables on the other two.

Headly also did her fair share of heavier drama, playing a prostitute in the Steppenwolf production of Lanford Wilson’s play Balm in Gilead in the early 1980s, directed by John Malkovich. It was a stormy relationship, on screen and off. They married in 1982 and divorced six years later after he had an affair with Michelle Pfeiffer.

In the classic western mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) Headly played a runaway wife, killed by the Sioux. And on ER (1996-97) she had the recurring role of Dr Abby Keaton, a paediatric surgeon who has a fling with Dr Carter (Noah Wyle) before going to work in Pakistan.

Glenne Aimee Headly was born in New London, Connecticut, in 1955. Her family situation was complicated, with a stepfather who was in the Navy and frequent moves in her early years. After her mother and stepfather separated, she went to live with her mother in the bohemian Greenwich Village area of New York.

Her mother recalled her accurately mimicking the speech and movements of a slightly eccentric person they had met when she was just three years old. By the time she started school she was creating characters and situations for the amusement of her friends.

She studied at New York’s High School of Performing Arts and tried to break into theatre there while working as a waitress without much success.

She went to Chicago to visit a boyfriend’s family and wound up joining Steppenwolf, where she did everything from acting to making sets and cleaning toilets.

She had a small role in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and played a mother whose daughter’s drawings come to life in the imaginative British horror film Paperhouse (1988). Then came Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Dick Tracy, in which she played the title character’s girlfriend Tess Trueheart.

In 1993 Headly married Byron McCulloch, a technician she met while filming Ordinary Magic (1992). She took time off after the birth of their son Stirling.

More recently she has balanced theatre, television and film. She was half-way through shooting a new comedy series called Future Man at the time of her death. Her husband and son survive her.

Brian Pendreigh