Celebrity Biographies
E. Katherine Kerr
Better known to fans of the American theater, as an actress and playwright, she also acted in the cinema, with Meryl Streep and Cher in “Silkwood”, and with the latter and Dennis Quaid in “Suspect”. E. Katherine Kerr she passed away on July 1, 2019, at age 82, three months after she was diagnosed with lymphoma.
Born on April 20, 1937, in Indianapolis (Indiana), Elaine Katherine Kerr’s mother worked as a music teacher, while her father, a doctor, died at the front during World War II. After graduating in English from Indiana University, she began working as a language teacher at a high school. When she was asked to take charge of the downtown theater group, she decided to go to New York to take acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, with the intention of returning to the Midwest to continue teaching. But the world of her acting attracted her so much that she sent everything to hell, to fight for her dream. She ended up getting a role in “The Trojan Women” by Euripides, directed by Michael Cacoyannis, also a film director.
As success eluded him, in 1978 he decided to take a break. “I went on a journey of self-exploration,” she declared. Upon returning she decided to stop being Elaine, adopting the stage name E. Katherine Kerr , reflecting her “inner change”. “I kept the E. so I wouldn’t totally kill Elaine.” Her new name brought her luck, as she began to succeed on the stage, and she wrote her first play, “Juno’s Swans”, a comedy about the relationship between two sisters that also got public recognition.
He made his film debut with a brief role in Tattoo , alongside Bruce Dern , who played a tattoo artist. After her would come small roles in Silkwood , where she was Gilda Schultz, co-worker at a nuclear power plant of the protagonist, Meryl Streep . “I dreamed of being recruited by Mike Nichols . The night before the test I didn’t sleep. When I entered the studio, the young Meryl Streep grabbed me and told me that she was really scared, so I said that I was too,” she recalled in an emotional letter published in the press in 2014, when the director died. “Even though there wasn’t a suitable role for me, you offered me Gilda Schultz, who was supposed to be younger.”
She also took part in Hijos de un dios menor , and was typecast in papers related to the judicial world, in Suspect , or State of Siege ; and as a judge in the telefilm The price of justice , and the series Trinity , Law and order and You only live once , with which she said goodbye to the screen. She wrote a book on acting, “The Four Principles: Applying the Keys of Brilliant Action to Life”, published in 2011.
Any information about his private life is unknown, except that he is survived by Tess Weber, his great-niece.