Ann Wedgeworth

American character actress, known for her roles as Lana Shields in Three's Company (1979) and Merleen Elldridge in Evening Shade (1990-1994). Wedgeworth won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for Chapter Two (1978). She also appeared regularly on the TV series Another World (1967–1970) and Somerset (1970–1973). Wedgeworth was a childhood friend and high school classmate of Jayne Mansfield. After moved to New York City in the late 1950s, she was admitted to The Actors Studio. Throughout the 1980s, Wedgeworth took many supporting film roles, often playing mothers, such as in No Small Affair, as Jon Cryer's mother, and in 1987's Made in Heaven as a mother unknowingly reunited with her dead son, and Patsy Cline's mother in Sweet Dreams starring Jessica Lange in 1985. In 1989 she portrayed Aunt Fern in Steel Magnolias. She appeared in the 1991 film Hard Promises. Most recently, she appeared in The Hawk Is Dying (2006), with Paul Giamatti, which opened at the Sundance Film Festival. Wedgeworth married Rip Torn in 1955, divorced 1961. They have a daughter, actress Danae Torn. In 1970 she married acting teacher/director Ernie Martin, and their daughter is actress/acting teacher/writer Dianna Martin. Wedgeworth died on 16 November 2017 after a long illness near her home in New York City, at the age of 83. Link to Wikipedia biography