Actor Maureen Stapleton, best known for her roles in Reds and Cocoon, has died aged 80.
In a career spanning five decades, Stapleton became known as a character actor specialised in realistic, unglamorous roles often playing matrons and grandmothers.
She was a renowned actor on stage, television and screen. Her big break came in the early 50s when she replaced the Italian star Anna Magnani in the Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo on Broadway.
She made her film debut in 1958 with Lonelyhearts, a Montgomery Clift drama, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. In the movie, she played a frustrated housewife who starts an affair with Clift's cub reporter.
Stapleton was nominated for the Academy awards another three times, including 1970's Airport and Woody Allen's Interiors in 1978. She finally clinched the golden statuette in 1981 for her performance as the anarchist Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty's Reds.
The actor was also one of a group of retired Americans bestowed with renewed vigour by aliens in Ron Howard's 1985 Cocoon.
She made her last film appearance in the 1997 romantic comedy Addicted to Love alongside Matthew Broderick and Meg Ryan.
Stapleton died of natural causes at her Massachusetts home on Monday. She is survived by her son and daughter.