{"id":203477,"date":"2025-10-16T05:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/203477\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T05:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:19:11","slug":"coming-home-oscar-nominee-heathers-counselor-was-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/203477\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Coming Home’ Oscar Nominee & ‘Heathers’ Counselor Was 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPenelope Milford<\/a>, who scored an Oscar nomination for Coming Home<\/a>, played the school counselor in Heathers<\/a>, appeared on Broadway and had roles in Endless Love and other films, has died. She was 77.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer family told our sister publications that Milford died Tuesday in Saugerties, NY, but did not provide a cause.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on March 23, 1948, in St. Louis, MO, Penelope Milford got her start on the New York stage, co-starring with Richard Gere in the Off Broadway show Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone. She later appeared on Broadway in Lenny (1972) with Cliff Gorman, who won a Tony for his lead title role, and the Best Musical Tony nominee Shenandoah (1975), for which she earned a Drama Desk nomination as featured actress.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe had appeared in a few films including Norman Mailer\u2019s 1970 indie drama Maidstone and an episode of CBS\u2019 George Kennedy cop drama The Blue Knight before landing the role of her career. Milford was cast in Hal Ashby\u2019s 1978 drama Coming Home as Vi Munson, whose brother Bill (Robert Carradine) returns from the Vietnam War a changed man, despite only being in country for a couple of weeks. Her roommate Sally (Jane Fonda) is married to a Marine (Bruce Dern) who is about to be deployed in Southeast Asia; things change when Vi inspires Sally to volunteer at a local VA hospital, where she meets an old classmate (Jon Voight).<\/p>\n

\n\tMilford picked up a Supporting Actress Oscar nom for her role \u2014 one of eight the film got including Best Picture \u2014 but lost to Maggie Smith in California Suite. Fonda and Voight won Academy Awards for their lead roles, and the pic also won for Best Original Screenplay. Watch the Coming Home trailer here:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tMilford would go on appear in more than a dozen films and TV movies through the late 1990s, including a role as Westerburg High School counselor in the cult dark comedy Heathers (1988), opposite Winona Ryder,\u00a0Christian Slater and\u00a0Shannen Doherty. Other big-screen roles included Franco Zeffirelli\u2019s Brooke Shields drama Endless Love, Ken Russell\u2019s Rudolf Nureyev-led Valentino (1977), the Robert Hays-Barbara Hershey romp Take This Job and Shove It (1979), drama Cold Justice (1991) and John McNaughton\u2019s Luke Perry-Ashley Judd crime drama Normal Life (1996) and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 (1996). Her final movie role was in the 1999 dark comedy Night of the Lawyers.<\/p>\n

\n\tMilford also appeared in a number of TV movies, most notably The Burning Bed, the 1984 thriller starring Farrah Fawcett that landed eight Emmy nominations. She also starred as the ailing title character in 1980\u2019s Seizure: The Story of Kathy Morris opposite Leonard Nimoy and had roles in 1982\u2019s Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story starring Sondra Locke and 1980\u2019s The Oldest Living Graduate opposite Henry Fonda and Cloris Leachman.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer brother Richard Kim Milford also appeared in multiple Broadway shows, including playing Rocky in the original production of The Rocky Horror Show that inspired the ultimate cult classic movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He died in 1980.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter leaving Hollywood, Milford taught at film schools in Chicago and Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include her brother Doug Milford and sister Candace Saint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penelope Milford, who scored an Oscar nomination for Coming Home, played the school counselor in Heathers, appeared on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,88009,96,16359,60534,2285,88010,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-203477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-coming-home","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-heathers","12":"tag-novid","13":"tag-obituary","14":"tag-penelope-milford","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}