Patricia Neal, a veteran actress and consummate survivor who won an Academy Award for her tough, earthy performance as an emotionally damaged housekeeper in 1963’s Hud, died yesterday at the age of 84 of lung cancer. Neal specialized in playing steely, strong-willed whose outward confidence masked self-doubt in memorable films like The Fountainhead, where she played the female lead opposite Gary Cooper, 1954’s A Face in the Crowd and 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still.
Neal’s career got off to an auspicious start when she won a Tony for Another Part of the Forest the very first year the awards were held. The Fountainhead followed two years later, as did a tumultuous affair with her married, much older co-star Gary Cooper. Neal’s personal life was so dramatic and eventful that in 1981 Glenda Jackson played her in the television movie The Patricia Neal Story. Beyond her tragic romance with Cooper, Neal suffered a series of brain aneurysms that put her in a coma in 1965 and was married to author Roald Dahl for three decades. The couple had five children.