The ‘Tootsie’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’ actor was 79

Teri Garr has died at the age of 79.

Garr appeared widely in film and television with over 140 credits. She was most famous for her comedic work in films such as 1974 Young Frankenstein and the 1982s Tootsiefor which she was nominated for an Oscar. In 2002, Garr revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Garr died Tuesday of the disease “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer told PEOPLE.

Garr was born in Ohio in 1944. Both her parents worked in show business: her father was a vaudeville performer, while her mother was a Rockette who eventually worked in costume production. The family, which also included her two older brothers, moved to New Jersey before settling in Los Angeles. Garr’s father died when she was 11.

“She put two kids through school,” Garr said Los Angeles Times by her mother in 2008. “I have a brother who’s a surgeon, who’s me, and my other brother builds boats. She was in the closet. She was a customer at the studio. She would always say, ‘We’re still alive. . .'”

Garr began training as a dancer, with an emphasis on ballet. She dropped out of college to move to New York to focus on acting, studying at the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute.

Her earliest projects allowed her to use her dancing skills. She appeared in six films starring Elvis Presley, including the 1964s Viva Las Vegas. She also appeared on TV serials as a dancer.

“I got sick and tired of dancing in the chorus,” she shared Roger Ebert in 1980. “I trained for 10 years. Finally I asked myself, ‘Why am I not in the front? I didn’t study all those years to be in the back and not get any money.’”

She continued, “But I was shy and sweet. So I started going to shrink and I learned how to talk to people. Directors would tell me, ‘We want you to play a character that’s a little less complex than you are.’ Yes, of course. What they mean is, ‘You’re playing a dummy’.”

Her first speaking role came in the 1968 film The Monkees Main. It was written by Jack Nicholson, whom she had met in acting class. In the same year, she appeared in an episode of Star Trek“Task: Earth”, which was her first major speaking role. She was also stuck on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1972.

Soon Garr began to find great success. In 1974, she appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s thriller The conversation. In the same year, she starred in Mel Brook’s horror comedy Young Frankenstein as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant – a role she got with the help of her mother.

“My mother was the wardrobe lady Young Frankenstein” she told PBS in 2012. “I asked her if they were done casting and she said she didn’t know.” Garr asked her agent to get her an audition, and after four rounds of auditions, she was cast. “It was unbelievable.” Her time on Sonny and Cher helped her pull off the role. “I got the German accent from Cher’s wig lady,” she revealed.

Three years later, she starred in Steven Spielberg’s Close encounters of the third kindwhich allowed her to display her dramatic skills. Then in 1982 she starred with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. Film critic Pauline Kael called Garr “the funniest neurotic giddy lady on screen.” She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the film, but lost to her Tootsie costs Jessica Lange.

Garr’s other major film roles at the time included the 1981s One from the heartThe 1983s Mr. motherThe 1985s After hours and the 1992s Mom and Dad save the world. But in a comedy world dominated by men, Garr had to push for more depth in her roles; she was not always successful.

“I tried to make the character a little more real,” she shared Washington Post in 1983 about her part in Mr. mother. “And they stopped me dead in my tracks. You don’t have to have a lot of brains in this business to realize that the only way you’re ever going to do something you really want to do is to become an executive.”

On television, she appeared in programs such as McCloud, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, The odd couple, Maude and Barnaby Jones. She was the host Saturday Night Live three times, in 1980, 1983 and 1985. Garr was a frequent guest on both The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Lettermaneven though she told it Roger Ebert in 1988, that her Letterman performances — where she often filled in for canceled guests — likely kept her from landing more serious parts.

“I went on the Letterman show the first time to plug something, and then I came back as the goof, the court jester,” she said. Ebert noted that Garr was one of the only Letterman guests who could “put dents in his confidence”.

Later roles for Garr included parts in Casper meets Wendythe Design by women spinoff series The women of the house, Dick and Ghost world. She also appeared on Friends as Phoebe’s birth mother.

Garr revealed in 2002 that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during the 1990s. She first started noticing symptoms while filming One from the heart and Tootsie.

She published a memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywoodin 2006, when she opened up about her illness. “MS is an insidious disease,” she wrote in an excerpt published by PEOPLE. “Like some of my boyfriends, it tends to show up at the most awkward times and then disappear completely. It would take over 20 years for doctors to figure out what was wrong. Sometimes they mentioned MS but all the tests came back. Then the symptoms would go away and I’d forget about it, sort of.”

Gossip about her diagnosis before she went public hurt her career. “Whatever this MS was, the industry wanted no part of it,” she wrote. “At first I was outraged. Whatever was going on in my body had been going on for years. It never got in the way of my work. Then I started to think that the job offers disappeared because I stank as an actress. It was a tough trio: mysterious symptoms, my insecurities about my acting abilities and the reality of being an ‘aging’ actress.”

Garr became a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and national chair of the Society’s Women Against MS program. She limited the number of projects she appeared in and retired from acting in 2011.

“It’s not in my nature to slow down, but I have to,” she shared Brain & Life magazine in 2005. “Stress and anxiety and all that high tension stuff is not good for MS.”

Garr married John O’Neil in 1993. Together they adopted daughter Molly. The couple separated in 1996.

She is survived by her daughter Molly O’Neil, 30, and grandson Tyryn, 6.