Anne Meara
| Anne Meara | |
|---|---|
Anne Meara in 1975
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| Born |
September 20, 1929 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | May 23, 2015 (aged 85) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1954–2015 |
| Spouse(s) | Jerry Stiller (m. 1954; her death 2015) |
| Children | Amy Stiller, Ben Stiller |
Anne Meara (September 20, 1929 – May 23, 2015) was an American actress and comedian. Along with her husband, Jerry Stiller, she was one-half of a prominent 1960s comedy team, Stiller and Meara. She was also featured on stage, television, in numerous films, and later became a playwright.
During her career, Meara was nominated for four Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, and won a Writers Guild Award as a co-writer for the TV movie, The Other Woman.
Meara was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of parents of Irish descent, Mary (née Dempsey) (1894-1941) and Edward Joseph Meara (1893-1980), a lawyer. An only child, she was raised in Rockville Centre, New York on Long Island. When Anne was 12 years old, her mother committed suicide.
When she was 18, Meara spent a year studying acting at the Dramatic Workshop at The New School in Manhattan. The following year, 1948, she began her career as an actress in .
Meara met actor-comedian Jerry Stiller in 1953 and they married the following year. Until he suggested it, she had never thought of doing comedy. "Jerry started us being a comedy team," she said. "He always thought I would be a great comedy partner." They joined the improvisational company The Compass Players (which later became The Second City), and after leaving, formed the comedy team of Stiller and Meara. In 1961 they were performing in nightclubs in New York, and by the following year were considered a "national phenomenon," said the New York Times.
Their often-improvised comedy routines brought many of their real-life relationship foibles to live audiences. Their skits focused on domestic themes, as did Nichols and May, another comedy team during that period. "They were Nichols and May without the acid and with warmth," notes author Lawrence Epstein. They also added a new twist to their comedy act, he adds, by sometimes playing up the fact that Stiller was Jewish and Meara was Catholic. After Nichols and May broke up as a team in 1961, Stiller and Meara were the number one couple comedy team by the late 1960s. And as Mike Nichols and Elaine May were not married, Stiller and Meara became the most famous married couple comedy team since Burns and Allen.
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