Teri Garr

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Teri Garr (born December 11, 1944 or 1947 in Lakewood, Ohio) is an American actress and comedian. Garr's father was Eddie Garr, a comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road.

One of her most acclaimed roles was in Tootsie, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress in 1982. Her movie debut was as an extra in the 1963 film A Swingin' Affair. During her early career she appeared in several Elvis Presley movies, usually in uncredited roles as a dancer. She had a cameo appearance as a damsel in distress in The Monkees film Head and in the mid-1970s had significant roles in major films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Young Frankenstein.

While some more recent sources give Garr a revised birth year of 1949, older sources state she was born in 1944 or 1947. As she certainly wasn't 13 when she played a dancer in "Fun in Acapulco", and she graduated from high school in 1962 [1], one of the earlier birth years is most likely to be accurate.

Garr has also appeared frequently on television. A notable early appearance was in the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" (1968). She played the recurring character of a desk police officer who was constantly forced to work late and always had to phone her date and cancel in McCloud. She was also a regular on several variety shows in the early 1970s including The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, The Ken Berry 'Wow' Show and The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour. She hosted Saturday Night Live three times during the early and mid-1980s. She played a recurring character in Friends (the estranged birth mother of Lisa Kudrow's character, Phoebe Buffay) in the late-1990s.

Garr appeared in a series of local television commercials in several markets for various FM radio stations.

In October of 2002, Garr made it public that she has MS. After years of uncertainty and secrecy surrounding her diagnosis, Teri explained her reasons for deciding to share her private battle with the world, "I'm telling my story for the first time, so I can help people. I can help people know they aren't alone, and tell them there are reasons to be optimistic because today treatment options are available."

Since Garr announced publicly that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she has become a leading advocate in raising awareness for MS and the latest treatments for the disease. She is a National Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and National Chair for the Society's Women Against MS program. Women Against MS (WAMS) is a nationwide education and fundraising program that helps to increase the public's awareness of MS and the National MS Society while acknowledging and encouraging the advancement of women philanthropists. In November 2005, Garr honored as the Society’s Ambassador of the Year for her commitment to raising awareness for the MS cause. This honor had been given only four previous times since the Society was founded.


Early in her career she was sometimes credited as Terri Garr, Terry Garr, Teri Hope, or Terry Carr.

She is the mother of an adopted daughter, and resides in Los Angeles.

Contents

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Television

[edit] Cultural References

  • In the Alf Tales (1998) episode "Cinderella", when the title character enters in her finery, her evil stepmother and stepsisters think she looks familiar. One comments, "She looks just like... like..." and all three cry, "Teri Garr!"

[edit] External links

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