American actor Tisa Farrow, who starred in movies including William Richert’s Winter Kills and James Toback’s Fingers, passed away, according to her sister Mia Farrow. She was 72.
Her brother, John Farrow, confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that she died in Rutland, Vermont.Mia Farrow posted on Instagram that she “apparently died in her sleep” on Wednesday.
“If there is a Heaven, undoubtedly my beautiful sister Tisa is being welcomed there,” she wrote. “She was the best of us — I have never met a more generous and loving person. She loved life & never complained. Ever.”Tisa Farrow made her film debut in Homer (1970), playing the girlfriend of a high school student (Don Scardino) who was greatly impacted by the Vietnam War. She later appeared in the low-budget horror films Zombie (1979), directed by Lucio Fulci, and Anthropophagus (1980).
In Toback’s Fingers (1978), Farrow played a woman who has a kinky romance with a deranged recluse (Harvey Keitel). She later appeared as a nurse in the black comedy thriller Winter Kills (1979).Farrow also appeared briefly as a party guest in Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979).Theresa Magdalena Farrow, the youngest of seven children, was born in Los Angeles on July 22, 1951. Her mother was Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane in the 1930s Tarzan films, and Australian director John Farrow (The Big Clock and Around the World in 80 Days).
She dropped out of school in the eleventh grade and worked as a server in New York before deciding to pursue a career in acting, as per the Hollywood Reporter. “I have no advantages,” Farrow told The New York Times in 1970.”I spent a long time going around town trying out for commercials, and I didn’t get one. I would always run into some career woman who disliked me right away because she didn’t like my sister Mia.”Following Homer, she participated in the French-Italian-Canadian murder drama And Hope to Die (1972), which starred Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Her other credits include Some Call It Loving (1973), Only God Knows (1974), Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976), Search and Destroy (1979), and the telefilms The Ordeal of Patty Hearst and The Initiation of Sarah.Farrow, who subsequently became an emergency room nurse, was married to producer Terry Deane. Jason, a son she had with him, died in Iraq in 2018 while serving in the United States Army.
In addition to Mia and John, survivors include her sisters Prudence (the subject of the Beatles song “Dear Prudence”) and Stephanie, daughter Bridget, and grandson Kylor.
Her two other brothers, Michael and Patrick, died in an aircraft crash in 1958 and committed suicide in 2009.Mia Farrow, of course, appeared in numerous Allen pictures, including Rosemary’s Baby and Peyton Place.
