Eileen Heckart, the Oscar-winning overprotective mother of Edward Albert's blind character in love with kooky Goldie Hawn in Butterflies Are Free, and the twice Emmy-nominated Aunt Flo Meredith, globe-trotting international correspondent of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant, died on December 31st aged 82.
Although the gravel-voiced consummate character actress, who earned a special Tony in 2000 for her career excellence on stage, described herself as "anything but eccentric", she was usually cast as some sort of emotionally warped or distraught woman, thanks to her tall, lanky frame, sad eyes, and foghorn voice.
But, whether she was inspiring young Mary or bedazzling Lou Grant, or interfering in the lives of her screen, television and stage children, it was the odder roles kept the actress working - and earning trophies in any medium she tackled.
Repeatedly nominated for nearly every acting award available, she received a couple of Emmys in addition to the Oscar and the Tony, as well as Outer Circle, New York Drama Critics, Drama Desk, Lortel, Daniel Blum and Obie awards.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 29th, 1919, Anna Eileen Heckart was reared by her grandparents after her parents divorced when she was two.
She worked her way through Ohio State University where she caught whooping cough which resulted in the deepening of her voice. She excelled in dramatics and was urged to become an actress.
After graduation in 1942, she went to New York with $142 in her pocket and clerked in a department store, read radio commercials and called time for badminton players at luxury hotels while studying at American Theatre Wing. She débuted the same year in a Blackfriars Guild play.
In 1943, she married her college sweetheart - John Harrison Yankee Jr who died in 1995 - settled in Connecticut and learned her craft in understudy and touring stage roles.
She found other opportunities in drama on the new invention of television, making her début in 1947 in such live-theatre series as Kraft Suspense Theater, Studio One and Philco Television Playhouse.
The 1950s became the seminal decade for her. She flourished on Broadway, prompting Hollywood to beckon, and managed to follow a couple of significant roles from stage to screen.
She began to attract major notice in 1953 when she played Rosemary Sidney, a love-starved school teacher in Picnic. A year later, she created the role of the grief-stricken mother of a murdered boy in The Bad Seed, earning a Donaldson award.
Although she made her motion picture début as Jane Wyman's gal-pal in Miracle in the Rain in 1956, she followed a few months later with her recreation of Mrs Daigle for the film version of The Bad Seed.
Before the decade ended, she was seen as Rocky Graziano's misfortune-weary mother in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Marilyn Monroe's waitress friend in Bus Stop.
Back on Broadway, she also earned raves for her role as Aunt Lottie Lacey in William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. She first played the prickly mother in the Broadway version of Butterflies Are Free in 1969 and then reprised the role for the 1972 film, earning her Academy Award as best supporting actress.
She was appearing as an Alzheimer's patient in The Waverly Gallery in 2000 when she received her special Tony. Then 81, she decided to withdraw from theatre, commenting that at 81 "you don't have the energy or the stamina you had when you were 60 or even 70".
She smoked up until her death and blamed her friend Bette Davis for her addiction.
"I went to a hypnotist and managed to stop smoking for six months," she recalled in a 1989 interview.
"Then I appeared in Burnt Offerings with Bette. Well, she smoked all day, and then she asked me to dinner. Pretty soon, I asked her for just one cigarette. Then I had another. And then I was a smoker again."
Eileen Heckart is survived by her three sons, Mark, Philip and Luke .
Eileen Heckart: born 1919; died, December 2001