Thaindian News

Aug 9 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Oscar winning actress Patricia Neal passed away on Sunday at the age of 84 years, says a report in ‘The New York Times’. Aside from her acting career, Neal was married for thirty years to the author of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, Roald Dahl, and had five children. ‘People’ magazine lists her cause of death as lung cancer.

Neal won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1964 for her role as the housekeeper, Alma in the movie ‘Hud’ with Paul Newman. She sadly suffered three strokes within a year of winning the award and was in a coma for three weeks, which left her semi paralyzed and unable to talk. She had to learn to walk and talk all over again.

Even with her physical problems and impaired memory, Neal came back to the silver screen in 1968 for the movie ‘The Subject Was Roses’, in which she played a very vindictive mother. She was nominated for an Oscar for this movie as well, but it was won instead by Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.

Her beginning came at the young age of 21 when she starred with Ronald Reagan in the comedy ‘John Loves Mary’. Some of her other work is ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ in 1951, and ‘A Face in the Crowd’ in 1957, as well as ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ in 1961. She is well known for her role in the 1949 adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel ‘The Fountainhead’.

It was during this role that Neal became involved romantically with Gary Cooper, and remained in the relationship for three years, until Cooper refused to leave his wife and family. Neal had become pregnant during this affair, but had an abortion instead of having the child. In a memoir which she wrote in 1988, she stated, “If I had only one thing to do over in my life, I would have that baby.”