When rumors started circulating in the late 1990s that she had multiple sclerosis, actress Teri Garr discovered a lot of Hollywood was afraid to even meet with her about potential acting gigs.
Though she managed to keep working, interviews went from rare to nonexistent for the popular comedic actress who was Oscar-nominated for "Tootsie."
"When you hear the word 'disabled,' people immediately think about people who can't walk or talk or do everything that people take for granted," Garr said in a recent interview. "Now, I take nothing for granted. But I find the real disability is people who can't find joy in life and are bitter."
Garr, 63, is anything but depressed and bitter these days despite the fact she's had the chronic and often debilitating disease involving the central nervous system for the last 25 years -- it was officially diagnosed in 1999 -- and suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm in December 2006. She's in several new movies, including "Expired," which opened last Friday.
"What's next?" she said, with her trademark laugh that has endeared her to audiences.
Though the steroids she was taking for her MS caused the former dancer to put on weight, Garr has slimmed down considerably over the last year. Svelte and youthful in pants and a tunic top, she walked slowly into the office in the home she's renting off Coldwater Canyon. There's just minimal movement in her right hand and she has a noticeable limp -- but she is steady on her feet. And she's always cracking jokes -- so much so that David Letterman called her "Shecky Garr" -- a play on the name of nightclub comic Shecky Greene -- when she was a guest recently on Letterman's show.
Garr credits a resistance trainer called NuStep (she now works with that company) and swimming for getting her back into shape after the aneurysm. "Before I moved here, I swam 27 laps a day. I think that's the answer to keep everything moving."
Before the aneurysm, Garr completed two indie films, "Expired," and "Kabluey," which is set for release on July 11.
In "Expired," she plays a dual role: the wheelchair-using stroke-victim mother of a shy meter maid (Samantha Morton), and her blowzy, white-trash sister. And in "Kabluey" she plays an eccentric woman who takes out all of her aggressions on a young man (writer-director Scott Prendergast). She always screams and swears at him as she drives to work in the morning when he's dressed up in a company's blue mascot outfit and handing out leaflets on the side of the road.
