Susan Tyrrell (born Susan Jillian Creamer; March 18, 1945 – June 16, 2012), was an American actress who appeared in dozens of film, stage and television productions over a forty-year career. Her performance as Oma in John Huston's Fat City (1972) earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1978, Tyrrell received the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Andy Warhol's Bad (1977). Of nearly 80 film and television credits, her work includes Forbidden Zone (1980), Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981), Night Warning (1982), Angel (1984) and its sequel, Avenging Angel (1985) and Cry-Baby (1990).
I don't like ingénue people and I don't like to see them in the movies. I like people with heart and soul, and character work is soul.
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[on being cast in oddball roles] I don't seek out these parts! I take these parts to pay the rent!
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I've been here for my own pleasure. Strictly. I even found pleasure in displeasure. I would ride those seas and walk those planks. Arrrr.
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I have the ambition of a slug. I work when I need money, which is about once a year.
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The last thing my mother said to me was, 'SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.' I've always liked that, and I've always tried to live up to it.
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I'm a loner. I don't like beautiful people, but I find beauty in the grotesque. And in the sweet soul inside someone who has been able to get through their life without being a rat's ass. Such people should be collected, should be swept up immediately and kept in a box of broken people. I've collected people my whole life. Sometimes it ends badly, but it's absolutely never on my part. Because I know how fabulous I am. You're just going to have to take my word for it - I'm an incredible person. I do good deeds, and I love people, but the only way I can do these things is to stay apart. Because you can just stand so much. But the people who you meet in your life, who cross your path, the ones who are decent, should be collected.
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I only give line readings. I love line readings - they just all have to be buried. That's my style of acting. Buried line readings. Buried overacting.
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Fact
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In 2000, she was diagnosed with Thrombocythemia which led to amputation of both her legs below the knee. She spent the years painting and writing.
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She was married twice briefly.
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Daughter of John Belding Creamer, an agent for the William Morris Agency, and Gillian Tyrrell Creamer.
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She is survived by her niece, Amy Sweet; two sisters, Candace Creamer Sweet and Carole Creamer Davenport; a half-brother, Peter Creamer; and her mother, Gillian Tyrrell Creamer for whom she has been estranged for decades.
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Following her death, she was cremated and her ashes scattered.
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Her mother had been in the Diplomatic Corps in China and the Philippines in the 1930s and 1940s; her father was an agent for Leo Carrillo, Loretta Young, Ed Wynn, Carole Lombard, and others.
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According to Tyrrell, Pauline Kael once referred to her as an entire school of acting (not intended as a compliment), and Rex Reed once wrote, "She has a body like an unmade bed." Supposedly, 'Tennessee Williams' once confided to her, "My favorite actors are 50 percent male and 50 percent female. You, my dear, are neither.".
8
Megan Mullally, Jack Black, Chloe Webb and others were among the stars who showed up at Johnny Depp's Sunset Blvd. club the Viper Room for a 2000 benefit in support of Susan who had recently lost her legs to a rare blood disorder. Webb actually auctioned off an old pair of Susan's shoes. Depp (the two co-starred in Cry-Baby (1990)) hosted the event to help defray her medical bills.
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After performing in regional theater throughout California as a teenager, Susan Tyrrell made her Broadway debut at the age of 17.
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Lost both of her legs because of a rare blood disease.
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