Susan Tyrrell

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BIRTHDAY

March 18, 1945

San Francisco, California, USA

RECENT CREDITS

Buddy Boy (FILM) Mar. 24, 2000

Relax...It's Just Sex (FILM) Mar. 5, 1999

Extreme Ghostbusters (TV) Sep. 7, 1997

Powder (FILM) Oct. 27, 1995

Comes the Dawn (TV) Jan. 11, 1995

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BIOGRAPHY

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This flinty blonde actress has specialized in spangly, trashy film femmes since her screen debut in "Shoot Out" (1971). Ironically, Susan Tyrrell began her career as a teenager playing the ingenue in the stage comedy "Time Out for Ginger" opposite Art Carney. After settling in NYC, though, she began to excel at playing women of questionable virtue in stage productions like "The Time of Your Life" and "Camino Real". In John Huston's "Fat City" (1972), Tyrrell offered a brilliant characterization of an alcoholic involved in an interracial romance and earned a richly deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Like many female actors, however, she found good roles were few. Tyrrell was relegated to portraying hardened females, like the woman of easy virtue discarded by Gene Hackman in "Zandy's Bride" (1974) and George C Scott's mistress in "Islands in the Stream" (1976). Capitalizing on these qualities, she played Carroll Baker's sloppy daughter-in-law in "Andy Warhol's Bad" (1976), an unabashed lesbian apartment building manager in "Angel" (1984) and its sequel "Avenging Angel" (1985). She was also delightful as Johnny Depp's acid-breathing grandmother with a soft spot for a bad kid in John Waters' "Cry Baby" (1990). Her performances as motorchicks or 50s-style moms in films that were either self-consciously campy--like her turn as Midge in "Big Top Pee-Wee" (1988)--or so delirious that they descended into camp, as in "Rockula" (1990). Much of her small screen work has been in a similar vein like her prisoner in "Willow B: Women in Prison" (ABC, 1980) and the lady of the evening who engages in fisticuffs with Elizabeth Taylor's "Poker Alice" (CBS, 1987).

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