Marta Heflin

Marta Heflin (March 29, 1945 – September 18, 2013) was an American actress born in Washington, D.C., whose career spanned New York stage musicals, television, and film. She was the daughter of theatre producer and journalist Julia Heflin and public relations executive Martin Heflin, the niece of Oscar-winning actor Van Heflin and actress Frances Heflin, and the first cousin of director Jonathan Kaplan.

Heflin's Broadway career ran from 1964 to 1982 and included productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical Soon, and Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Her stage work in New York during the 1960s and 1970s preceded her transition to screen acting, which began with an appearance on the soap opera The Doctors.

Her film career gained momentum through a series of collaborations with director Robert Altman. Before working with Altman, she took a supporting role as Quentin in Frank Pierson's 1976 remake of A Star Is Born, which starred Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. Heflin then appeared in Altman's A Wedding in 1978, after which Altman selected her to replace Sandy Dennis in A Perfect Couple (1979), where she played Sheila Shea, a rock singer who enters a relationship with an older Greek-American businessman after connecting with him through a videotape computer dating service.

During the 1980s, Heflin appeared in two television films. Playing for Time (1980) was a concentration camp drama starring Vanessa Redgrave, and The Gentleman Bandit (1981) followed a priest wrongly accused of a series of armed robberies. In 1982, she reunited with Altman for the Broadway production of Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, playing Edna Louise, a member of an all-female James Dean fan club called the Disciples of James Dean. She reprised that role in Altman's film adaptation of the play the same year.

Heflin died in Manhattan on September 18, 2013, at the age of 68, following a prolonged illness. The following year, the Marta Heflin Foundation was established as a private grant-making organization supporting the work of other charitable organizations. Among its grants, the foundation awarded PAWS NY $10,000 for its Foster and Emergency Care Program, which provides care for pets whose guardians are facing health emergencies.