Actress Susan Anspach, who had several acclaimed film roles in the 1970s and 1980s and later had legal and personal disputes with her onetime lover and co-star, actor Jack Nicholson, died Monday at her home in Los Angeles, according to the Washington Post.
The death of his 75-year-old mother was announced by her son, Caleb Goddard. Anspach had an apparent heart ailment.
After making her acting debut on the New York stage, Anspach moved to Hollywood and had a breakthrough role in the 1970 film “Five Easy Pieces,” opposite Nicholson. In 1972, she played Woody Allen’s haranguing ex-wife in “Play It Again, Sam.”
In 1973, Anspach starred in “Blume in Love,” written and directed by Paul Mazursky, in which she played Nina, the straying wife of a divorce lawyer, played by George Segal. Soon afterward, Anspach’s career slowed down. She had roles in television but did not make another movie until “The Big Fix” with Richard Dreyfuss.
She later starred in the 1981 film “Montenegro” (1981) as the American wife of a Swedish businessman. New York Times critic Vincent Canby called Anspach “one of America’s most daring and talented actresses … who has yet to land a film role that shows her off to full advantage.”
“Montenegro” would be her last major film role. She played the wife of Dabney Coleman in “The Slap Maxwell Story,” a sitcom about a sportswriter that lasted one season in 1988, but had few other high-profile parts. Anspach taught acting and had occasional stage and TV roles.
They starred together in “Five Easy Pieces,” in which Nicholson played a once-promising classical musician who was working as an oil field roughneck. Anspach portrayed a pianist engaged to the brother of Nicholson’s character.
Anspach later claimed Nicholson was the father of her son, who was born in 1970. Nicholson denied that, and the two eventually became embroiled in a legal dispute over her house, on which Nicholson held the mortgage.
“He (Nicholson) is trying to ruin me absolutely,” Anspach told People in 1996, according to the Post. “The only power he finally had over me was to have me sign my house over to him.” She filed for bankruptcy and sued Nicholson for $1 million.
The dispute was settled out of court, and Anspach kept her home.
Anspach also dated musician Robbie Robertson of the Band during the 1970s. Her second marriage, to musician Sherwood Ball, ended in divorce. Survivors include her children, Catherine Goddard and Caleb Goddard; and three grandchildren.