LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Teri Garr: Close Encounters
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Garr's kooky charm and alternately whiny and deadpan delivery were put to superb use in comedies and adapted well to several dramas. She played a frazzled but loyal wife to John Denver's suburban Moses in "Oh, God!" (1977). That same year, she was fine in a more complexly shaded role in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as the increasingly troubled wife of Richard Dreyfus who cannot deal with her husband's growing obsession with alien visitors. Garr was Dustin Hoffman's on-again off-again girlfriend in "Tootsie" (1982), a frustrated actress with a heavy inferiority complex who finally gets to blow off steam; the performance earned her an Oscar nomination. She landed a rare romantic lead in Coppola's off-beat musical romance "One From the Heart" (1982) and was a confused divorcee with two children who shacks up with a cocaine dealer in the credible but disturbing drama "Firstborn" (1984).
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Garr, one of America's most beloved comic actresses... starred in "Young Frankenstein," "Oh, God!," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and has been a frequent guest on David Letterman. She began her career as a dancer. Garr is a paid ambassador for MS Lifelines, a patient service program dedicated to assist persons living with MS and their caregivers. MS Lifelines and the ambassador program are funded by Serono and Pfizer.
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Francis Ford Coppola gave Garr her first major film role with 1974's The Conversation, where she played Amy, the girlfriend of Gene Hackman's surveillance man Harry Caul. With her next part... she proved herself impossible to pin down, going the opposite direction to play the riotously accented maidservant Inga in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). From here she began a string of playing mothers and wives in high-profile films, few of which allowed her to dabble in her sillier side: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Oh, God! (1977), and The Black Stallion (1979). It wasn't until Tootsie in 1981 that she received full recognition for her talents and started to become identified with her knack for playing charmingly sweet airheads. She received her one and only Oscar nomination as Sandy, the neurotic soap actress.
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Born into a show business family, Garr became established in television in the 70s with appearances on Star Trek, It Takes a Thief, McCloud, and as a regular on The Sonny and Cher Show as Cher's friend Olivia. Garr was ... endeared as Phoebe's birth mother on the now syndicated NBC hit show Friends. Teri has risen to become one of Hollywood's most versatile, energetic, and well-recognized actresses, starring in many memorable films including Young Frankenstein, Mr. Mom, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Tootsie, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
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Garr later had significant roles in major films such as Young Frankenstein, Oh, God!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion and Mr. Mom. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Dustin Hoffman's actress friend in Tootsie.
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It was ... Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- another movie associated with Garr. Especially since these days the thespian is known more for her MS than she is for her box office. Diagnosed in 1999 with the debilitating disease of the nervous system, one that's cost her much of one arm as well as a leg, she is now to MS what legs-crossing is to Sharon Stone, what telephone-tossing is to Russell Crowe and what moving-to-France-and-looking-like-a-homeless-person is to Johnny Depp.
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