Oscar Nominated Actress Jill Clayburgh Dies of Leukemia at 66

Oscar nominated actress who rose to stardom on the heels of the women’s liberation movement, Jill Clayburgh, 66, who had chronic lymphocytic leukemia for 21 years, died of the disease at her home in Lakeville, Conn. Friday. Nominated for her role as a divorced woman carving out her own identity after finding herself suddenly single when her husband leaves her for a younger woman in Paul Mazursky’s 1978 film An Unmarried Woman, Clayburgh was a veritable seventies movie darling with roles in the football flick Semi-Tough, the Gene Wilder / Richard Pryor vehicle Silver Streak and Starting Over. Her first breakout role came in 1969 in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party, with Robert DeNiro.

TracyEGilchrist

Oscar nominated actress who rose to stardom on the heels of the women’s liberation movement, Jill Clayburgh, 66, who had chronic lymphocytic leukemia for 21 years, died of the disease at her home in Lakeville, Conn. Friday, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

She dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, Rabe said, and conducted herself with enormous grace "and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human,” said her husband, playwright David Rabe.

Nominated for her role as a divorced woman carving out her own identity after finding herself suddenly single when her husband leaves her for a younger woman in Paul Mazursky’s 1978 film An Unmarried Woman, Clayburgh was a veritable seventies movie darling with roles in the football flick Semi-Tough, the Gene Wilder / Richard Pryor vehicle Silver Streak and Starting Over. Her first big breakout role came in 1969 in Brian De Palma’s co-directed film The Wedding Party, with Robert DeNiro.

Recently, Clayburgh starred as the matriarch in Dirty Sexy Money, on Nip / Tuck, and in the big screen adaptation of Running with Scissors.

An alumna of the Brearley School and Sarah Lawrence, Clayburgh caught the acting bug as a summer stock apprentice at the famed Williamstown Theater Festival in northwestern Massachusetts. She eventually moved to New York City and began starring in Off-Broadway productions before landing roles on Broadway including in the musical Pippin.

She met her husband to be, Rabe, at an audition to play a go-go dancer in Rabe’s In the Boom Boom Room, a role she lost to Madeline Kahn. While she didn’t land the role, she did marry the playwright several years later in 1979.

Clayburgh is survived by her husband and their three children, actress Lily Rabe, Michael Rabe and stepson Jason Rabe.