Stage and Screen Star Jill Clayburgh Dies at Age 66

Jill Clayburgh, an elegant actress who jumped from Broadway in the 1960s to movie stardom in the 1970s, then returned to the stage after her children (with playwright husband David Rabe) were grown, died on November 5 of chronic leukemia. She was 66. News of her illness spread after her actress daughter, Lily Rabe, missed performances of the current Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice, in which she co-stars with Al Pacino as Portia.

Born in Manhattan on April 30, 1944, Clayburgh graduated from the elite all-girls’ Brearley School and Sarah Lawrence College before launching her acting career at the Charles Street Repertory Theater in Boston. She co-starred with Pacino in the 1968 off-Broadway production of The Indian Wants the Bronx made her Broadway debut the same year in The Sudden and Accidental Death of Horse Johnson, a play that lasted only five performances. Clayburgh had better luck in her next two Broadway outings, the musicals The Rothschilds (1970) and Pippin (1972). Tom Stoppard’s 1974 comedy Jumpers became her last Broadway outing for 11 years as her star rose in Hollywood.

After receiving a 1975 Emmy nomination for the TV movie Hustling, Clayburgh became one of the biggest movie stars of the late 1970s with a string of comedy hits that included Silver Streak (1976), Semi-Tough (1977) and Oscar-nominated performances in the feminist classic An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Starting Over (1979). Notable dramatic performances included playing the first female Supreme Court justice in First Monday in October (1981) and a drug addict in I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, which featured a screenplay by her husband, David Rabe.

“When I was younger, I was always auditioning for his plays in New York because I thought he was a great writer,” Clayburgh said of Rabe in a 2005 Q&A with Broadway.com. “So, I had met him—but he was sitting there judging my acting, and he was married then. When I moved to California, he got in touch with me because he wanted to do a movie of one of his plays. And then we started going out.”

After the birth of daughter Lily and son Michael, Clayburgh ramped down her career and settled down in the Connecticut suburbs. “I didn't want to do theater when I had young children,” she told Broadway.com. “The schedule is just too hard.” The kids grew up largely unaware of their mother’s stardom and their dad’s fame as the author of Streamers, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Hurlyburly, among other plays. “It certainly wasn't the focus of our life during the time [the children] were growing up,” she said. “The focus was them—their soccer and their ballet, their school and their friends. We were pretty involved and excited by all of that.”

Clayburgh made one appearance on Broadway in the 1980s, co-starring with Frank Langella and the late Raul Julia in Noel Coward’s Design for Living in 1984, then did two shows in a row in 2005-2006, Richard Greenberg’s A Naked Girl on the Appian Way and a revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park. Off-Broadway, she received a pair of 2007 Lucille Lortel Award nominations for her performances in Keith Bunin’s The Busy World Is Hushed and Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House.

On television, Clayburgh's recent performances included playing the title character’s mother on Ally McBeal, an Emmy-nominated performance in Nip/Tuck and a regular role as the matriarch of a rich and corrupt New York family in Dirty Sexy Money.

Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy cast Clayburgh in his film adaptation of Running with Scissors and was said to be developing a film biography of Richard Nixon, Dirty Tricks, with her in mind to play Pat Nixon. Clayburgh is listed as a cast member in the forthcoming comedy Love and Other Drugs, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.

Over the past few seasons, Clayburgh has been a regular Broadway first-nighter alongside her rising star daughter Lily. David, Lily and Michael Rabe survive her, along with her stepson, Jason Rabe.