Teri Garr, actress who combined flashy style with depth in Tootsie and Young Frankenstein – obituary

But she could act, her performance as the lascivious but innocent Inga showed her talent for verbal and visual gags. However, it was Tootsie that allowed her to showcase her true range.

Her character, Sandy, is a stressed-out, unsuccessful actress who is regularly rejected for acting roles – and eventually by her boyfriend Michael (Dustin Hoffman), who manages to steal a role on a soap opera for which she was rejected by pretends to be a woman.

In one scene, Teri Garr's character cheerfully and desperately says goodbye to a friend: “It was a wonderful party, my date was with someone else, I had a lot of fun, do you have Seconal?”

“A lot of it was improvised,” she told a Boston Globe interviewer. “Like my character’s desperate speech: ‘I never said I love you; I don't care, I love you. I read “The Second Sex.” I read “The Cinderella Complex.” I am responsible for my own orgasm! I don't care!' It’s really about a girl being angry about how the world is changing.”

Tootsie won Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (for Hoffman). But an example of life reflecting art: Teri Garr lost the supporting actress Oscar to Jessica Lange, who played an actress Hoffman falls in love with. She admitted to being terribly disappointed, but, as usual, took it lightly: “I was the girl who danced in Elvis movies,” she wrote. “I was buried in the sand for an Annette Funicello film. Would I really win an Oscar?”

She was born Terry Ann Garr in Lakewood, Ohio on December 11, 1944 (she changed her name to Teri after a numerology expert told her that having double letters in her first and last names was unlucky). Her mother, Phyllis Lind, a stocking model known as “Legs,” was one of the first high-kicking Rockettes at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Her father, Eddie, was a struggling vaudeville comedian.