Oscar winner Stapleton dies at 80

She was in the select club of stars who won the "triple crown" of showbusiness - an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award.

Stapleton won the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds.

She was nominated for Academy Awards on three other occasions, including her 1958 movie debut in Lonelyhearts and Woody Allen's 1978 drama Interiors.

And the actress picked up an Emmy, the top honour for TV acting, for Among The Paths to Eden in 1967.

She was nominated for six of Broadway's biggest accolades, the Tonys, between 1951-81, winning twice.

The straight-talking star's other well-known film roles included gentle sci-fi drama Cocoon, a role as Barbra Streisand's mother in 1987's Nuts and Airport, which earned her an Oscar nomination in 1971.

Sexual abuse

In her autobiography Hell of a Life, she wrote that she was sexually abused by her father while growing up in New York, and that he tried to extort money from her when she became successful.

Acting was the only route open to her, she said. "For a fat, struggling kid like me, the only way out was to be someone else - an actor."

Stapleton studied alongside Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando at Lee Strasberg's famous Actor's Studio.

But Strasberg's methods did not suit her. "What he said was so convoluted, I didn't get it... All his talk drove me nuts," she wrote.

"I've been asked repeatedly what the 'key' to acting is, and as far as I'm concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake."

Famous friends

Stapleton made her Broadway debut aged 21 and won her first Tony five years later for The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams.

Williams would become a close friend. "I loved him, but what can I tell you? He was not the boy next door," she said of the playwright.

She also counted Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor among her friends.

Her second Tony Award came in 1971 for playing an alcoholic singer in Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady.

On screen, her film career continued to prosper, with parts in Bye Bye Birdie, Plaza Suite, Made in Heaven and The Fan - but she rarely made the leap from supporting to lead actress.

Her chaotic personal life, with two failed marriages, numerous affairs and years of alcohol abuse, were also chronicled in her autobiography.

Her career in later life was hampered by a fear of bridges, aeroplanes and elevators.