Elizabeth Hartman

Elizabeth Hartman

Mary Elizabeth Hartman (December 23, 1943 – June 10, 1987) was an American actress of the stage and screen. She is best known for her debut performance in the 1965 film A Patch of Blue, playing a blind girl named Selina D'Arcy, opposite Sidney Poitier, a role for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award. The next year, she appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now as Barbara Darling, for which she was nominated for a second Golden Globe Award. Hartman also starred opposite Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page in Don Siegel's The Beguiled, and the 1973 box office smash and cult favorite Walking Tall. On stage, Hartman was best known for her interpretations of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, and Emily Webb in the Broadway production of Our Town. A sensitive and shy individual marred by mental health issues—for which she was institutionalized many times—Hartman quit acting in 1982 after voicing the character of Mrs. Brisby in Don Bluth's well-received first animated feature The Secret of NIMH (1982), before dying of suicide at age 43.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Elizabeth Hartman »