Carrie Nye

Though an occasional bit player in films, character actress Carrie Nye enjoyed her broadest reception as a stage performer. Born Carolyn Nye McGeoy in Greenwood, Mississippi on October 14, 1936, Nye began her career as a thespian around 1955 at the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, northern Massachusetts. She moved to Manhattan five years later, where she made her Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of a Colette novel, A Second String. Nye quickly became trademarked by her southern drawl and deadpan quips. She starred in numerous on and off-Broadway productions over the ensuing decades, such as the Ruth Gordon-penned A Very Rich Woman (1965) and Tom Stoppard's Real Inspector Hound (1972). She returned to Williamstown, sporadically, over the decades, and became a key component of the festival. Nye took her first film bow in Sidney Lumet's 1966 The Group, with a cast that included Candice Bergen, Joanna Pettet, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman and Shirley Knight. Many additional cinematic and TV roles followed, including Diana Proctor in the 1972 Liz Taylor/Richard Burton small-screen vehicle Divorce His, Divorce Hers, Aldena Kittner in the 1979 Alan Alda/Jerry Schatzberg effort The Seduction of Joe Tynan. In the Stephen King/George Romero omnibus effort Creepshow (1982), Nye portrayed Sylvia Grantham, the woman unexpectedly terrorized when her nasty deceased husband returns in zombie form to claim his father's day cake. She also appeared in the Shelley Long vehicle Hello Again, as Regina Holt. Nye won a Best Actress Emmy for the 1980 telemovie The Scarlett O'Hara War. Nye died of lung cancer, on July 14, 2006. She was survived in death by her husband, talk show host Dick Cavett. Nye met Cavett in the early sixties, at the Yale Drama School. They wed in 1964. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide