R.I.P. Melinda Dillon, from A Christmas Story and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - The A.V. Club

Moving to New York, she quickly landed in the limelight when she was cast in the role of young wife Honey in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.

Dillon ultimately left the part (opposite Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill, and George Grizzard) after just nine months—citing the intensity of the material, the grueling schedule, and the sudden pressures of stardom for a subsequent stay in a psychiatric hospital—but not before picking up a Tony nomination for Best Performance By A Featured Actress.

Notable collaborators from the period include Hal Ashby, who cast her in his Woodie Guthrie biopic Bound For Glory, and Sydney Pollack, who filmed her alongside Paul Newman and Sally Field in 1981's Absence Of Malice.

That was one of two roles Dillon would pick up an Oscar nomination for—the other had come back in 1977, when Ashby recommended her to Steven Spielberg to play the mother of a three-year-old abduction victim in Close Encounters.

Dillon continued to work regularly through the 1990s, appearing in films like The Prince Of Tides, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything!, and Magnolia; meanwhile, in TV, she showed up for single-episode stints on series like Picket Fences, The Client, and more.

She slowed down in the 2000s before ultimately retiring; her final few roles include an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2005, and then a small part in 2007 Adam Sandler drama Reign Over Me.