Elizabeth Franz, who earned a Tony award for her prolific performance in Death of a Salesman, has passed away at the age of 84.
The actress, who played the role of wife Linda Loman in the 1999 Broadway, breathed her last earlier this month at her home in Woodbury, CT.
Her husband Christopher Pelham told the New York Post that his wife died on November 4, due to cancer and a severe reaction to her treatment medication.
Born June 18, 1941 in Akron, OH, Franz appeared in a number of plays on and off Broadway, which included her titular nun in Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Matthew Broderick’s on-stage mother in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and as the youngest of four sisters in a Midwestern family in Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven.
However, the role which highlighted her acting chops was opposite Brian Dennehy’s melancholic traveling salesman Willy Loman.
She chose to play the character more assertively than previous actresses, prompting Miller to rave over the late actress that Franz "found the role’s strong protective instincts, which come out as fury, something that past performances had missed."
In addition to Broadway projects, the Emmy-nominee boasted some film credits under her belt.
She appeared in School Ties (1992), Sabrina (1995), The Substance of Fire (1996) and Christmas with the Kranks (2004).
Her television roles, meanwhile, includes appearing in episodes of Roseanne, The Equalizer, Judging Amy, Law & Order, Homeland, Gilmore Girls and Grey’s Anatomy.
Franz married her first husband, character actor Edward Binns, with whom she often collaborated on stage, in 1983. He died in 1990.
She is survived by Pelham, who is a screenwriter and her brother Joe.