Actress Colleen Dewhurst, whose throaty voice and earthy charisma were a perfect match for the dramas of Eugene O'Neill, has died. She was 65.
Dewhurst died of cancer late Thursday at her home, said Jan Stutts, a spokeswoman for the Westchester County medical examiner's office.Over her career, Dewhurst won two Tonys, two Obies and three Emmys, including one for her guest appearance as Candice Bergen's mother on CBS' "Murphy Brown."
The actress had been president of Actors' Equity union in New York since 1985.
She appeared in this year's film "Dying Young," which starred her son Campbell Scott, one of two children she had with her former husband actor George C. Scott.
Dewhurst's last Broadway appearances were in 1988, when she alternated roles in O'Neill's masterpiece "Long Day's Journey into Night," the playwright's exorcism of his own devastating family life, and "Ah, Wilderness!," his only comedy.
"I always say that I am not an O'Neill expert," she said in a 1988 interview. "I feel all I really know are his women."
"O'Neill's women have great passion, a passion for life," she said. "Nothing is done half-way. It's not little tiny things that happen to them. These plays are not about the day you cracked up the car and didn't know how to explain it."
Dewhurst's television roles also included parts in the miniseries "Anne of Green Gables" and "The Blue and the Gray."