Eileen Brennan

Golden Globe winner Eileen Brennan has died aged 80. The veteran actress was nominated for two Globes, winning once in 1982 for her role as the tough-talking Capt. Doreen Lewis in Private Benjamin, the TV spin-off from the movie, in which she co-starred with Goldie Hawn. After a series of accidents and illnesses she said in a 1999 interview: “What else can they do to me? The lesson is you just take it day by day. Some of us just have to learn it the hard way.” She began her career on the New York stage in 1959 and made her film debut in the 1967 comedy Divorce American Style.  She appeared regularly on the 1960s comedy television show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and her movies included The Last Picture Show, Daisy Miller, The Sting, At Long Last Love and Scarecrow. More recently she appeared with Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Dangerous. Her career was interrupted when she was hit by a car in 1982 and her long recovery led to drug addiction and a spell in the Betty Ford Center.  She fell from the stage while appearing in a 1989 production of Annie, breaking a leg, and in 1990 she was treated for breast cancer. Her marriage to British poet and photographer David Lampson ended in 1973. She is survived by two sons, two grandchildren and a sister.