Everything to know about the late movie star Melinda Dillon

ACCORDING to her family, movie star Melinda Dillon died on January 9, 2023.

She was best known for her roles in the holiday classic A Christmas Story and the sci-fi drama Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Who was Melinda Dillon?

Melinda Dillon was born in Hope, Arkansas, on October 13, 1939.

She grew up on Army bases in Arkansas, Germany, and Chicago before graduating high school.

After graduation, she got a gig working as a coat check girl at Second City, an infamous comedy club in Chicago.

She got a taste for acting when she stepped in to play a role in a skit while working for the club.

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What roles was Melinda Dillon best known for?

By 1963, she had moved to New York City with dreams of achieving greatness in the theatre.

She did just that when she was nominated for a Tony Award after her breakthrough Broadway role as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

After succeeding on the stage, Melinda took her talents to Los Angeles, where she acted as Ralphie Parker's mother in A Christmas Story.

She delivered the now-infamous line: "You’ll shoot your eye out!" to Ralphie as he begs for a BB gun.

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She also co-starred in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which she plays a mother obsessed with making contact with aliens after extraterrestrial beings kidnap her son.

What was Melinda Dillon's net worth?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Melinda Dillon had a net worth of around $3million when she died.

No cause of death has been confirmed.

Melinda Dillon is survived by her son, Richard Libertini Jr, whom she had through her marriage to fellow actor, Richard Libertini.

While the two divorced in 1978, they remained cordial, with Melinda confirming to the press that her ex-husband had died of cancer in 2016.

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