Marian Seldes, an actress who during six decades on stage became one of the most admired figures in American theater, renowned particularly for her interpretations of the works of Edward Albee, died Oct. 6 at her apartment in New York City. She was 86.
Her sister-in-law, novelist Susan Shreve, confirmed her death and said she did not know the cause.
Towering in height as well as in stature, and seemingly ethereal in her features, Seldes was widely revered for her ability to inhabit roles comic and tragic, subtle and flamboyant. Writing in the New York Post, drama critic Clive Barnes named her the “American theatrical diva for our time.” In 2010, she received a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
Seldes, a stalwart artist, did not allow illness or vacation to keep her from professional duties. “I don’t mind saying it — I’m a compulsive person, have been all my life, always on time, never missing a day of school or work,” she once observed. “That’s because time is all we have, and it mustn’t be wasted.”
Among her rarest achievements was her run in Ira Levin’s “Deathtrap,” in which she portrayed Myra Bruhl, the wife of a homicidal playwright, and for which she received one of her five Tony Award nominations in 1978. Seldes appeared in approximately 1,800 consecutive performances of the show before it closed in 1982 — a feat recognized by Guinness World Records.
Seldes had a long and fruitful professional relationship with Albee, the celebrated American playwright and three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Among her most noted Albee roles were Julia, the serial divorcee in the suburban drama “A Delicate Balance,” for which she received a Tony Award in 1967; two characters, known only as B and A, in “Three Tall Women,” which received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize; and the female half of the older couple at the center of “The Play About the Baby.”
“What’s most amazing about Marian is basically her variety,” Albee told the New York Times in 2001, amid a run of “The Play About the Baby.” “She can play so many kinds of roles,” he said, noting that “she wisely didn’t try to duplicate what came before.”
Seldes received additional Tony nominations for her roles as a divorcee in Oliver Hailey’s comedy “Father’s Day” (1971), Mme. Desmermortes in Jean Anouilh’s “Ring Round the Moon” (1999) and the erstwhile stage star in the George Kaufman and Edna Ferber comedy “Dinner at Eight” (2003).
She appeared with many of the best-known actors of the era, including Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer in an English adaptation of the French romance “Ondine” (1954) by Jean Giraudoux, Tallulah Bankhead in the Tennessee Williams drama “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” (1964) and Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in “A Delicate Balance.”
Seldes appeared in recent years with Angela Lansbury in “Deuce” (2007), Terrence McNally’s play about former tennis partners reconnecting. Not long before, she acted in McNally’s “Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams,” in which her character is dying of cancer and wants the man played by actor Nathan Lane to end her life.
“So one matinee I smother her. She dies and I was in tears,” Lane told the Times several years ago. “I drop the pillow and from the audience I hear an old man say, ‘Vell, that’s the end of Marian Seldes.’ And I thought: Oh, no it’s not! She’s still going to go on!”
Marian Hall Seldes was born Aug. 23, 1928, in New York. Her father, Gilbert Seldes, was a noted culture critic, and her mother, Alice Wadhams Hall, was a socialite. The family was well-connected in intellectual and artistic circles.
At 6, Seldes was severely injured when she jumped off a motorboat into the water and was struck by the propeller, lacerating her face.
“I’ve never been obsessed by how I looked,” she once told the Times. “In fact, I would rather have looked more ordinary so I could play more parts more truthfully.”
Seldes trained in ballet before pursuing the theater, studying under the teacher Sanford Meisner. In the late 1940s, under director John Gielgud, she debuted on Broadway as a serving girl in a production of “Medea” featuring Judith Anderson.
By the 1970s, her stamina was on full display. When Guinness recognized her for her “Deathtrap” run, she noted that she had previously appeared in 942 consecutive performances of “Equus,” the 1974 Peter Shaffer play about a psychiatrist (Anthony Hopkins) and a young patient (Peter Firth) with a violent fixation on horses.
Her recent movie credits included a role in the Woody Allen film “Hollywood Ending” (2002) and her performance, opposite Julia Roberts, in “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003). On television, she appeared in “Perry Mason” and “Law & Order,” as Murphy Brown’s aunt on the sitcom starring Candice Bergen, and as Mr. Big’s mother on “Sex and the City.”
For more than two decades, she taught drama at Juilliard, among other institutions, and her students included Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, William Hurt, Robin Williams, Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney and Viola Davis.
In addition to newspaper commentaries, including stories about her travels, Seldes published a memoir, “The Bright Lights: A Theater Life” (1978), and a novel, “Time Together” (1981).
Her first marriage, to television producer Julian Claman, ended in divorce. In 1990, she married screenwriter Garson Kanin, who died in 1999. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage, Katharine Andres of Connecticut; a brother, Timothy Seldes of Washington; and three grandchildren.
Theatergoers often marveled at Seldes’s apparently endless energy over dozens or hundreds of performances.
“People say, ‘How can you stay in a play for a long time?’ ” she once told the Times. “I say, ‘The audience is never the same.’”