LAKEVILLE, Conn. – Jill Clayburgh, whose Broadway and Hollywood acting career stretched through the decades, highlighted by her Oscar-nominated portrayal of a divorcee exploring her sexuality in the 1978 film “An Unmarried Woman,” died Friday. She was 66.
Her husband, Tony Award-winning playwright David Rabe, said she died after a 21-year battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She was surrounded by her family and brother when she died at her home in Lakeville, he said.
She dealt with the disease courageously, quietly and privately, Rabe said, and conducted herself with enormous grace “and made it into an opportunity for her children to grow and be human.”
Clayburgh came from a privileged New York family. Her father was vice president of two large companies, and her mother was a secretary for Broadway producer David Merrick. Her grandmother, Alma Clayburgh, was an opera singer and New York socialite.
Growing up in a such a rich cultural mix, she could easily have been overwhelmed. Instead, as she said in interviews, she asserted herself with willful and destructive behavior – so much so that her parents took her to a psychiatrist when she was 9.