Penelope Milford, the Oscar-nominated actress who starred in hits like “Coming Home,” “Valentino” and “Heathers,” has passed away. She was 77.
Milford’s sister, Candace Saint, confirmed that she died in an assisted living facility in Saugerties, New York, on Tuesday, Oct. 14, per The Hollywood Reporter. No cause of death was given.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 23, 1948, Milford later moved to Illinois with her family.
Her professional stage career kicked off in 1971 when she co-starred alongside Richard Gere, whom she was rumored to have dated, in an Off-Broadway production of “Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone.” The production was based on the life of musician-turned-novelist Richard Farina.
She made her Broadway debut one year later in Julian Barry’s Tony Award-winning “Lenny,” and returned to the Broadway stage once more in 1975 for “Shenandoah.”
Milford earned a Drama Desk nomination as featured actress for her role in “Shenandoah.”
But while the beloved actress appeared in Norman Mailer’s edgy indie film “Maidstone” in 1970 and played a silent-film star in Ken Russell’s biopic “Valentino” in 1977, it wasn’t until “Coming Home” in 1978 that Milford broke out as a Hollywood starlet.
Milford portrayed Vi Munson in the Hal Ashby-directed romantic war drama, a character whose brother (Robert Carradine) returns home following two weeks in Vietnam.
The film also starred Jane Fonda as Sally Hyde, a loyal and conservative military wife married to a captain in the United States Marine Corps, as well as Jon Voight as Luke Martin, one of Sally’s former high-school classmates who gets sent to Vietnam before coming home from the war wounded.
Milford landed one of four acting Oscar nominations for “Coming Home” during the 1979 Academy Awards.
Although Fonda and Voight won for Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively, Milford lost out on Best Supporting Actress to Maggie Smith and her role in “California Suite.”
The late actress went on to appear in several films and TV movies throughout her career, including a role as Westerburg High School counselor in the 1988 dark comedy “Heathers” opposite Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty.
Other big-screen roles included the Brooke Shields drama “Endless Love” (1981), “Cold Justice” (1991) and John McNaughton’s “Normal Life” (1996).
Her final movie role was in the 1999 dark comedy “Night of the Lawyers.”
“My dream is to do the story of Irene Castle, the ballroom dancer,” Milford told The New York Times at the height of her career in 1978. “She influenced women incredibly.”
“I love that time period, right before World War I, before the mass media, before technology, before all this mind‐expansion stuff,” she added at the time. “It was really pure then.”
