Tony Winner Patricia Elliott Dead at 77

Patricia Elliott, the Tony Award-winning stage and television actress, died on December 20 at her home in Manhattan. She was 77 years old. The cause of death was a rare cancer, Leimyloma sarcoma, said her niece, Sally Fay.

Born in Gunnison, Colorado, on July 21, 1938, to Clyde Porterfield Elliott and the former Lavon Lucille Gibson, she was a direct descendant of President Ulysses S. Grant, John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, and Mary Lyon, who founded Mt. Holyoke College in 1837. Elliott graduated from the University of Colorado in 1960, with a degree in English Literature, going on to study at London's Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. She kicked off her 50-year acting career working in repertory at the Cleveland Playhouse and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, before moving to New York, where early roles included a Lincoln Center production of King Lear.

Elliott won a 1973 Tony Award for her role of Countess Charlotte Malcolm in the original production of the Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical, A Little Night Music. Four years later, she received a Tony nod for her role in the original Main Stem production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Shadow Box. Additional Great White Way credits included The Elephant Man, where her leading men included David Bowie, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, King Henry V, A Month of Sundays and 13 Rue de l’Amour.

On screen, Elliot was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Renee Divine Buchanan on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live, playing the role for 23 years, from 1988 to 2011.

Elliott’s 1960 marriage to Christopher Vivien Hawthorne Fay ended in divorce in 1962, but they remained lifelong friends until his death. Devoted to prayer and meditation, she spent extended time in India and studied for nine years with a Jain master, Gurudev Chitrabhanu, taking what became a well-reported vow of celibacy in 1977. In addition to her niece, Sally Fay, she is survived by an aunt, Claudine Walker, and several cousins.