The death has been announced of Melinda Dillon, the American actress best known for her Oscar-nominated role in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She was 83.
Dillon's family announced that she passed away last month on 9 January. No cause of death was given.
Variety reports that Arkansas-born Dillon began her career in stage productions and improvisational comedy, receiving a Tony nomination for her performance in the original 1962 Broadway production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
Her big-screen debut came opposite Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve in 1969's The April Fools. She went on to star in films including Bound for Glory, Slap Shot, F.I.S.T., A Christmas Story, The Prince of Tides, Magnolia, and Reign Over Me.
Dillon was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Jillian Guiler, the distraught mother of the young boy taken by aliens in the 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
She followed it up with another Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role opposite Paul Newman and Sally Field in the 1981 thriller Absence of Malice.
On television, Dillon's many credits included Bonanza, The Twilight Zone (1985), Picket Fences, and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Her last screen appearance was in the TV series Heartland in 2007.
