NEW YORK — Mary Pat Gleason, a prolific character actress with nearly 200 television and film credits whose most surprising role may have been as herself in a one-woman play she wrote about her bipolar disorder, died June 2. She was 70.
Her death was announced by her manager, Todd Justice. A nephew, John Brostrom, told news outlets that the cause was uterine cancer.
Even if you didn’t know her name, you probably recognized her face. Since the early 1980s, Ms. Gleason had appeared in some of the nation’s most popular and enduring television series, including “Dallas,” “Guiding Light,” “Friends,” “ER,” “Sex and the City,” “Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “How to Get Away With Murder.”
Most recently, she appeared on the sitcom “Mom” as a member of an Alcoholics Anonymous group. She also had recurring roles on “Will & Grace,” “Instant Mom,” “1600 Penn,” and “Desperate Housewives,” as well as a starring role on the short-lived 2008 adventure series “The Middleman.”
Ms. Gleason spoke openly about her experience with bipolar disorder. Once called manic depression, the disorder causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, concentration, and the ability to carry out routine tasks.
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She became a vocal proponent of mental health treatment, and in 2006 wrote and starred in “Stopping Traffic,” a one-woman play about her struggles with the disorder.
“With candid humor and riveting power, this audacious high-wire act takes us on a tour of Hollywood, New York and the human heart that is equal parts inspiring, gut-bustingly funny and true,” the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, where the play was performed, wrote on its website.
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Reviewing the play for The New York Times, Anita Gates said that Ms. Gleason “seems a bit self-conscious playing herself once in a while, but she and her self-deprecating sense of humor are largely in fine form.”
The play is now used as a teaching aid for the Mayo Clinic’s mental health programs, Brostrom told USA Today. He said that Ms. Gleason’s advocacy created changes in mental health policies that resounded through various entertainment unions.
Mary Pat Gleason was born on Feb. 23, 1950, in Lake City, Minn., the daughter of Mary Elizabeth (Kane) and Harold Clifford Gleason. She got her start in local theater while in high school, starring in a production of “Once Upon a Mattress” to rave reviews.
Her television career began in 1982 with a role on the NBC soap opera “Texas.” She soon moved to “Guiding Light,” the popular daytime soap, where she played Jane Hogan, the companion to Alexandra Spaulding, the cutthroat matriarch who was played by four different actresses over a quarter-century.
Ms. Gleason not only acted in “Guiding Light,” she also contributed to scripts and was part of the team that won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1986 for outstanding daytime drama series writing.
Her first clue that she had bipolar disorder came early in her acting career. As she described it in her one-woman play, she didn’t sleep for five nights and imagined a suicidal man on a ledge, who then “shimmered away.”
When she was making the 1992 film “Lorenzo’s Oil” with Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte, she had a vision in which Nolte had lights in his eyes. And while shooting Nicholas Hytner’s 1996 film version of “The Crucible,” she managed to get through a hanging scene, in which she was executed alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, but then froze in a courtroom scene when her character, Martha Corey, was called on to laugh at foolish teenage girls.
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But the disorder did not impede her career.
Her television credits also included “Full House,” “Murphy Brown,” “Empty Nest,” “L.A. Law,” “Saved by the Bell,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Suddenly Susan,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” and “2 Broke Girls.”
She acted in more than 50 movies, including “Basic Instinct” (1992), “Traffic” (2000), “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” (2007), and “Intolerable Cruelty” (2003), the Coen Brothers romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Her best-known movie role was probably in the teenage romantic comedy “A Cinderella Story” (2004). She played Eleanor, a kindhearted waitress who roller-skates around a diner and lends a sympathetic ear to the downtrodden lead character, played by Hilary Duff.
Her most recent television role was on “Mom,” the CBS sitcom, now in its seventh season, about a reunited mother and daughter who are both struggling with addiction. Ms. Gleason played Mary, an AA member whose bizarre stories of her problems are frequently interrupted by Bonnie, one of the show’s two main characters, played by Allison Janney.
Ms. Gleason appeared on seven episodes of “Mom.” In the last one, seen on Oct. 24, her character died of a brain aneurysm during an AA meeting. It was Ms. Gleason’s final television appearance.
Her last movie role was in “Pencil Town,” set for release this year.