Actress Priscilla Pointer dies at 100

Actress Priscilla Pointer has died, living to the ripe old age of 100. Pointer's name may not have been well-known but you knew her face. She played real-life daughter Amy Irving's mom in Brian De Palma's Carrie, and played the mother of other celebs including Diane Keaton's in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Sean Penn's in The Falcon and the Snowman, Kyle MacLachlan's in Blue Velvet and Victoria Principal's on Dallas.

Pointer was born in New York City on May 18, 1924 to artists Augusta Leonora and Kenneth Keith Pointer. She began performing in the late 1940s in theatre and on Broadway, touring in productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, The Country Wife and The Condemned of Altona, and had a featured role on the 1954 TV series China Smith. Pointer took a break from acting and returned in the early 1970s with a starring role on the soap opera Where the Heart Is. From 1981 to 1983, she had a recurring role on Dallas as Rebecca Barnes Wentworth, mother of Cliff Barnes, Pamela Barnes Ewing and Katherine Wentworth. Her character died in a mid-air plane collision.

Notable TV credits include N.Y.P.D., The High Chaparral, The Name of the Game, McCloud, Adam-12, The Rockford Files, Kojak, Cannon, Harry O, Police Woman, Doc, Phyllis, Barnaby Jones, Mrs. Columbo, Family, Knots Landing, From Here to Eternity, Lou Grant, Quincy, M.E., The A-Team, St. Elsewhere, Too Close for Comfort, Call to Glory, Amazing Stories, Rags to Riches, Newhart, L.A. Law, The Flash (1990), ER, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel, Judging Amy, and Cold Case. She also appeared in several TV movies including Death Takes a Holiday, Collision Course: Truman vs. MacArthur, Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, A Killing Affair, Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night, Judgment Day, The Gift of Life, Mysterious Two, Generation, Hemingway, A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story, Runaway Father, Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics, and Alone.

Pointer made her feature film debut in 1976's The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. In 1976 she was the mother of Sue Snell in Carrie, and had roles in Nickelodeon, The Onion Field, Honeysuckle Rose, The Competition, Mommie Dearest, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Micki + Maude, From the Hip, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Rumpelstiltskin, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud, A Show of Force, The Painted Desert, Carried Away, and Inferno.

Pointer worked on Broadway with the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center in the 1960s and 1970s with her first husband, Jules Irving. They along with Herbert Blau and his wife Beatrice Manley had founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop in 1952. After Jules died in 1979, she married Robert Symonds, who died in 2007. At the Actor's Workshop, she answered phones and appeared on stage in The Crucible and The Birthday Boy, and made her Broadway debut in a 1965 revival of Danton's Death.

Pointer died peacefully in her sleep on April 28 at an assisted living facility in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She is survived by son David, and daughters Amy and Katie, and eight grandchildren.