\n\tValerie Perrine, the former Las Vegas showgirl who earned a best actress Oscar nomination for portraying Lenny Bruce\u2019s drug-addicted stripper wife in\u00a0Lenny\u00a0and played Lex Luthor\u2019s secretary in a pair of Superman films, died Monday. She was 82.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tPerrine\u2019s death at her home in Beverly Hills was announced<\/a> by friend and soulmate Stacey Souther. She was diagnosed in 2015 with Parkinson\u2019s disease, which eventually robbed her of her mobility and much of her ability to eat and speak.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe faced Parkinson\u2019s disease with incredible courage and compassion, never once complaining,\u201d he wrote. \u201cShe was a true inspiration who lived life to the fullest \u2014 and what a magnificent life it was. The world feels less beautiful without her in it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSouther cared for her for years, as Seth Abramovitch wrote about<\/a> for The Hollywood Reporter in April 2023. A GoFund Me page<\/a> that was set up for her medical expenses will now go toward burial costs.<\/p>\n \n\tThe actress did comedy and drama with equal fervor, also starring as the love interest of Jeff Bridges<\/a>\u2018 NASCAR driver Junior Johnson in Lamont Johnson\u2019s The Last American Hero\u00a0(1973) and as the soon-to-be ex of champion rodeo rider Robert Redford<\/a>\u2018s character in Sydney Pollack\u2019s The Electric Horseman (1979).<\/p>\n \n\tPerrine, unfortunately, also starred with The Village People and Caitlyn Jenner<\/a> in the lamentable disco-themed Can\u2019t Stop the Music\u00a0(1980), one of the two films that inspired the Worst Picture Golden Raspberry Award show (The Razzies).\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt ruined my career \u2014 I moved to Europe after, I was so embarrassed,\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n \n\tFor playing Honey opposite Dustin Hoffman<\/a> as the tormented 1960s\u00a0stand-up legend in\u00a0Lenny\u00a0(1974), Perrine received the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, a BAFTA honor for most promising newcomer and then her Oscar nomination. (She lost out to Ellen Burstyn<\/a> of\u00a0Alice Doesn\u2019t Live Here Anymore.)<\/p>\n \n\tIn the Christopher Reeve<\/a>-starring\u00a0Superman\u00a0(1978) and its 1980 sequel, Perrine\u2019s seductive but soft-hearted Eve Teschmacher conspires with Luthor (Gene Hackman<\/a>), but she ultimately rescues the Man of Steel from the villain\u2019s trap in return for a promise that he will save her mother. In the second movie, she helps her bald-headed boss escape from jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWidely regarded as a sex symbol during a period of feminist backlash against sex symbols, Perrine was photographed several times for\u00a0Playboy, and in the wake of\u00a0Lenny\u2019s release,\u00a0The New York Times described her<\/a> as \u201ca sensual Betty Boop, with her cherubic blue eyes, button nose and rosebud lips.\u201d (The piece was headlined \u201cValerie Perrine, or The Return of the Hollywood Sex Kitten.\u201d)<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1973, she had become the first woman whose breasts were intentionally exposed on television when she appeared in the PBS telefilm\u00a0Steambath. She attributed her casting to her relaxed attitude about appearing topless, something she said she had cultivated onstage in Vegas and on the beaches of Europe.<\/p>\n \n\tPerrine was shown getting out of the shower and dropping her towel in the film, and her scene served as a popular fundraising tool for the nonprofit broadcaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tValerie Ritchie Perrine was born on Sept. 3, 1943, in Galveston, Texas. Her mother, Renee, was a dancer from Scotland, and her father, Kenneth, was a career military man who would retire from the\u00a0U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel.<\/p>\n \n\tShe spent her childhood following her father\u2019s military postings, which took the family to Japan, Paris and many stops in between.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMy father is and always has been a WASP only,\u201d Perrine told the\u00a0Times\u00a0in the 1974 profile. \u201cHe\u2019s a true American. Our family goes back to 1640 \u2014 we were on the second ship after the Mayflower. My closest friend in the whole wide world is Barry Goldwater\u2019s daughter, Peggy, but the Goldwaters were the only Jewish people I was allowed to go around with \u2014 and they went to the Episcopal Church. I had to date boys from the country club. I went out with a garage mechanic once, and daddy went after him with a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe briefly studied psychology at the University of Arizona but dropped out to become a headlining Las Vegas showgirl. \u201cMother cried, Daddy swore,\u201d she told\u00a0People\u00a0magazine of her decision. At one point, she was making $800 a week as the lead dancer in a Lido de Paris show at the Stardust Hotel.<\/p>\n \n\tThe accidental death of her fianc\u00e9, Bill Haarman \u2014 an importer and gun collector who lived in Beverly Hills, he was killed in January 1969 when a pistol tucked in his waistband fell to the floor and fired a bullet, which ricocheted off a door and into his heart \u2014 left Perrine devastated and led her to leave Vegas, and she traveled throughout Europe for a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShe then had a fling with hairdresser Jay Sebring, but he would be murdered by Charles Manson<\/a> followers in the home of Sharon Tate in August that year. (Perrine had been invited to the house that day but had to work instead.)<\/p>\n \n\tHer natural charisma eventually caught the attention of casting agent Robert Walker at a dinner party. After eavesdropping on her lively phone call to her boyfriend, Walker inquired if she had any acting experience.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a 2013 interview<\/a> with screenwriter Larry Karaszewski,\u00a0Perrine\u00a0said, \u201cHe asked if I had ever acted, and I said no. He asked me if I could, and I said yes. He asked me if I had a picture, and the only picture I had was me as a topless showgirl in Vegas in a little G-string.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOnce Monique James, then the head of new talent at Universal, saw the\u00a0revealing photo, she invited her to screen test for the role of\u00a0soft-core pornography actress Montana\u00a0Wildhack in\u00a0Slaughterhouse-Five\u00a0(1972), directed by George Roy Hill.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey told me to wear a bikini because they wanted to see what my body looked like. \u2026 I didn\u2019t have a bikini, so I wore my Vegas costume,\u201d she recalled. Despite an audition\u00a0that she described as so awful that James claimed to have burned the tape, Perrine\u00a0got the part.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThough she never met\u00a0Slaughterhouse-Five\u00a0author Kurt Vonnegut during the filming of the movie, she later ran into him at Elaine\u2019s while living in New York, and he told her he approved of the adaptation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHaving never taken acting lessons, Perrine said her success came from just trying to be real. \u201cI don\u2019t really know what I do. I don\u2019t think about anything until I get on the set. I just learn my lines, period,\u201d she said. \u201cThen when I\u2019m on the set, I think of something that has happened to me in the past \u2014 like in that crying scene with Dustin in\u00a0Lenny, I thought of an old boyfriend who had hurt me, and \u2014 that really did it.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhile working on\u00a0the movie, Hoffman confided to\u00a0Perrine\u00a0that he hated when people mistook him for Al Pacino<\/a> or Robert De Niro<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tOn set in a large restaurant in Miami,\u00a0Perrine\u00a0noticed that \u201call of these tourists and retirees were watching and passionately in love with Dustin.\u201d When she exited the stage, she told the crowd, \u201cWhen Dustin comes out, I want you people over here on the left to all yell, \u2018Bobby De\u00a0Niro,\u2019 and on the other side, I got them to yell, \u2018Al Pacino.\u2019 And by God, every one of them did it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Hoffman came out and heard the crowd, he threw down his script and yelled, \u201cWhere the fuck is Valerie?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe later starred with Rod Steiger in\u00a0W.C. Fields and Me\u00a0(1976) as Fields\u2019 mistress Carlotta Monti; she later called it her worst experience on a film set. \u201c[Steiger] was just not a happy man, he was full of hate for everything,\u201d she told Karaszewski.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other hand, she referred to Michael Caine<\/a>, her co-star in the comedy\u00a0Water\u00a0(1985), as \u201cthe nicest human being I\u2019ve ever worked with.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe\u00a0pinpointed the moment she knew the Alan Carr-scripted\u00a0Can\u2019t Stop the Music\u00a0would fail to being scolded by first-time feature director Nancy Walker \u2014 better known for playing the mother of TV\u2019s Rhoda Morgenstern<\/a> \u2014 before a scene with Jenner, who had won an Olympic gold medal at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.<\/p>\n \n\tPerrine was trying to help Jenner, an acting novice, relax before they started filming, when \u201call of a sudden, I heard Nancy yell out for ruining the set because I was talking during a tape \u2014 and she was looking the wrong direction and didn\u2019t know the camera was on me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPerrine also appeared with Alan Arkin<\/a> in\u00a0The Magician of Lublin\u00a0(1979) and with Jack Nicholson<\/a> in\u00a0The Border\u00a0(1982), and she played a vapid office assistant in the Mel Gibson starrer\u00a0What Women Want (2000). She continued taking guest roles on television until she reduced her workload in the early 2000s because of declining health.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut it was the Superman movies for which she would always best be remembered, and throughout her life she was greeted by fans with a bellow \u2014 \u00e0 la Lex Luthor \u2014 \u201cMiss Teschmacher!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAfter having battled essential tremors for more than a decade, she was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s. She underwent treatments including brain surgery to help stop the shaking, with limited success.<\/p>\n