Lisa Kudrow pays tribute to her Friends mother Teri Garr following actor's death aged 79

30 October 2024, 13:42

Beloved actress Teri Garr, known for her memorable roles in Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, passed away on Tuesday, October 29, surrounded by family and friends.

Her death was attributed to complications from multiple sclerosis, according to her publicist Heidi Schaeffer.

Lisa Kudrow, who shared the screen with Garr on Friends, offered a touching tribute to her former co-star.

"Teri Garr was a comedic acting genius who was and is a huge influence on me and I know I'm not alone in that," Kudrow told People. "I feel so lucky and grateful I got to work with Teri Garr."

Garr appeared in three episodes of Friends as Phoebe Abbott, the biological mother of Kudrow's character Phoebe Buffay. Her debut came in the season 3 finale, 'The One at the Beach' (1997), where her character was revealed to be more than just a family friend.

The storyline continued in season 4's 'The One with the Jellyfish' and 'The One with Phoebe's Uterus' (1998), exploring the complex mother-daughter relationship and featuring a memorable subplot involving a puppy-sitting experiment.

Throughout her illustrious career, Garr graced both big and small screens, appearing in classic films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and numerous television shows including McCloud, MASH, and The Bob Newhart Show. She also hosted Saturday Night Live three times between 1980 and 1985.

In 2002, Garr publicly revealed her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, which she had received in the late 1990s. In her 2006 memoir Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, she described MS as "a sneaky disease" that would "show up at the most awkward times and then disappear entirely."

She later became a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and chaired their Women Against MS program before retiring from acting in 2011.