After a life full of drama both on and off screen, Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal has succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 84.
The Kentucky-born star had many professional highs during her 50-year career, including a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in 1946’s ‘Another Part of the Forest’, a starring role in the science-fiction classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (1951) and a Best Actress oscar for her role in ‘Hud’ (1963).
The actress also had a turbulent home life. Following her role opposite Gary Cooper in the 1949 movie ‘The Fountainhead’, Patricia embarked on a passionate and turbulent affair with the married actor, despite his being 25 years her senior.
She later married British author Roald Dahl, with whom she had five children. However, in 1961, tragedy struck the couple twice when their four-month-old son Theo was seriously hurt in a taxi accident and their first-born child olivia died from measles at age seven.
In 1965, when pregnant with her fifth child, Patricia suffered from a series of debilitating strokes that left her in a coma for three weeks and required emergency brain surgery. When she awoke, she was confined to a wheelchair and found her speech severely impaired but daughter Lucy was born without complications.
Patricia learned to walk and speak again, and her rehabilitation was so successful that she was offered the part of ors Robinson in 1967’s ‘The Graduate’. While she turned the role down, she later starred in ‘The Subject was Roses’ for which she received another oscar nomination (losing that year to Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand who tied for Best Actress).
Patricia leaves behind her four surviving children and seven grandchildren, including her supermodel granddaughter Sophie Dahl.
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