{"id":52793,"date":"2014-04-14T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T19:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/?p=52793"},"modified":"2014-04-14T12:37:07","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T19:37:07","slug":"rip-phyllis-frelich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/2014\/04\/rip-phyllis-frelich\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Phyllis Frelich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Award-winning actress <b>Phyllis Frelich<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/phyllis-frelich-dead-children-a-695449\">passed away<\/a> on Thursday, April 10 at the age of 70. Frelich is familiar to fans of <I>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation<\/i> for her guest-starring role in the episode <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/episodes\/csi\/season11\/the_two_mrs_grissoms.shtml\">&#8220;The Two Mrs Grissoms&#8221;<\/a> during the show&#8217;s eleventh season. She played Betty Grissom, the mother of former CSI supervisor Gil Grissom (<b>William Petersen<\/b>).<\/p>\n<p>\n<!--more-->Frelich was the oldest of nine deaf children born to deaf parents, and she won the 1980 Best Actress Tony Award for her leading role in the Broadway production of <i>Children of a Lesser God<\/i>. She went on to appear in 18 different TV series and movies between 1981 and 2011, including an Emmy-nominated role in the 1985 TV movie <i>Love is Never Silent<\/i> and a 31-episode stint as a nun on <i>Santa Barbara<\/i> in 1988. More recently, she struggled for the past several years with progressive supranuclear palsy (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ninds.nih.gov\/disorders\/psp\/detail_psp.htm\">PSP<\/a>), a rare brain disorder for which there are no effective treatments.<\/p>\n<p>\nFrelich worked with Academy Award winner <b>Marlee Matlin<\/b> in &#8220;The Two Mrs Grissoms&#8221;, and Matlin posted this tweet on Thursday:<\/p>\n<p>\n<center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p>I&#39;m devastated that Phyllis Freilich Tony winner for &quot;Children of A Lesser God&quot; has died. She was a TRUE talent. RIP <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/f6TzVjkwPV\">pic.twitter.com\/f6TzVjkwPV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Marlee Matlin (@MarleeMatlin) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MarleeMatlin\/statuses\/454383239679848448\">April 10, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s a quote from Matlin&#8217;s 2011 CSI Files <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/2011\/08\/interview-marlee-matlin\/\">interview<\/a> about working with Frelich:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>CSI Files:<\/b> You also got the chance to work with Phyllis Frelich, who originally played your character from <i>Children of a Lesser God<\/i>. Was this the first time the two of you had met?<\/p>\n<p>\n<b>Matlin:<\/b> I have a great deal of admiration and respect for Phyllis. She created the role for which she won the Tony for Best Actress and I won an Academy Award for Best Actress. She is one talented woman and when we first worked together on my first telefilm <i>Bridge to Silence<\/i>, we just hit it off immediately. We\u2019ve worked together a few times since, most recently on a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie called <i>Sweet Nothing in My Ear<\/i> on CBS. It was great to see her and many other deaf actors come together on this episode of <i>CSI<\/i>, thanks to <b>Anthony<\/b> [<b>Zuiker<\/b>] and the rest of the <i>CSI<\/i> executive producing crew.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><P><br \/>\nAdditional sources: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0293992\/\">IMDb<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phyllis_Frelich\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Award-winning actress Phyllis Frelich passed away on Thursday, April 10 at the age of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2906],"tags":[2990],"class_list":["post-52793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csi-lv","tag-guest-stars"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"Rachel","author_link":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/author\/rachel\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/categories\/csi-lv\/\" rel=\"category tag\">CSI<\/a>","tag_info":"CSI","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52793"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52814,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52793\/revisions\/52814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csifiles.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}