Entertainment publicist Nanci Ryder, whose clients included Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez and Courteney Cox, died Thursday. She was 67.
Ryder was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2014. Her friends and clients, like Renee Zellweger and Reese Witherspoon, became known as Team Nanci, for their fundraising efforts to find a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Ryder died about 2:25 p.m. at her home in Studio City, Creative Artists Agency partner and longtime friend Bryan Lourd, told the entertainment trade publication The Hollywood Reporter.
Ryder’s other clients during her three-decade career as a publicist included Viggo Mortensen and Blake Lively.
Ryder was born July 1, 1952 in Long Island, where she stayed through high school. She moved to Los Angeles in 1979.
“I was the least likely to succeed,” she once said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I didn’t go to college. I got married at 19. I moved out here and had no job, but I found this and loved it. And when you find the right thing, it’s amazing. It becomes an addiction.”
Her first client was Michael J. Fox after she started Nanci Ryder Public Relations in 1984.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, but beat it in a year.