Actress Lainie Miller has died aged 84 at home after battling metastatic cancer, a heartbroken family spokesperson has confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Lainie was best known for her show-stopping burlesque number in The Graduate in 1967. She then went on to become a longtime Hollywood labour advocate, script supervisor, business agent and producer. She went on to perform burlesque as a Las Vegas showgirl then used her experience to play a stripper in a memorable scene that humiliates Katharine Ross’ Elaine Robinson in The Graduate (1967).
She left acting in 1966 to start a career in nursing, putting her paycheck from The Graduate toward her studies. “I wanted to start exercising my brains — for a change,” she said. “My tassels were getting tired.” Miller then returned to the film industry in the 1980s as an IATSE 871 script supervisor. She worked on the 1988-90 syndicated series Freddy’s Nightmares and on the 1996 film Down Periscope, among other projects. She also served as business agent for more than a decade as well.
Her husband Dick Miller, who boasted a 50-year long acting career and appeared in over 180 movies, died aged 90 back in 2019. They were married for 52 years.
Their love story is memorialised in the documentary That Guy Dick Miller (2014), whose premiere came on her 73rd birthday. "I was his fan before I met him, so I’m living a dream."
Her family said at the time: "Fierce, fabulous, passionate, witty and romantic are just some of the words friends and loved ones use to describe Lainie, who often held down the fort with enormous tenacity and chutzpah so her husband could maintain a career as an actor — the quintessential woman-behind-the-man."
Miller met her future husband at Schwab’s Pharmacy in Hollywood, recognising him at the drugstore counter from Corman’s War of the Satellites (1958).
She is said to have quipped at the time: "That guy could put his shoes under my bed anytime," beginning a love story which spanned six decades.
Dick died of a heart attack in their Toluca Lake, Los Angeles home while he was being treated for pnuemonia.
Lainie is survived by her granddaughter Autumn, grandson-in-law, Ceaser; and her beloved dog, Popeye. She was predeceased by her daughter Barbara Ann.
