Oscar-Winner Patricia Neal Dies at 84 After a Tragic Life
Thompson on Hollywood
Patricia Neal, winner of both Academy and Tony awards, died at her home in the northeastern US state of Massachusetts Sunday at the age of 84, The New York Times reported. The cause of her death was not immediately known, but the newspaper noted that Neal had suffered three strokes early in her career and was semi-paralyzed and unable to speak for a long time after that.
Neal started out strong as a Hollywood leading lady, a beautiful and powerful character actress in such films as The Fountainhead, co-starring her lover Gary Cooper, The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Face in the Crowd and Hud, for which she won the best actress Oscar in 1964.
The actress made her movie debut in the 1949 comedy "John Loves Mary", where she played opposite the late former president Ronald Reagan.
She later starred in the screen version of John Patrick's play "The Hasty Heart" (1950), in which she played a nurse who tries to comfort a dying soldier, and "The Breaking Point" (1950), which was based on Ernest Hemingway's novel "To Have and Have Not", The Times said.
In 1964, Neal received an Oscar for best actress for her performance in the movie "Hud", where she appeared with Paul Newman.
But a year later she had three strokes that left her in a coma for three weeks, The Times said.
Following these crises, she was able to learn to walk and talk again.
Despite a severely impaired memory that made it difficult to remember lines, she returned to the screen in 1968 in the movie "The Subject Was Roses".
Married to author Roald Dahl, she gave birth to five children. One was brain-damaged in a 1960 taxi accident when he was a baby, another succumbed to measles in 1962. Tessa Dahl and her daughter Sophie both became screenwriters. Neal went on to suffer three strokes in 1964 and had to relearn, badgered by her husband, how to walk and talk.
She resumed her award-winning career in films and television with The Subject was Roses and The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.
Dahl and Neal broke up in 1983.
A.P. quotes her as follows from her 1988 autobiography, As I Am: “Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison.”