Hollywood icon Lainie Miller, best known for burlesque performance in The Graduate, dies at 84 after cancer battle

Actress Lainie Miller died at home after battling metastatic cancer, a family spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

Lainie was best known for her show-stopping burlesque number in The Graduate in 1967. The star had performed burlesque as a Las Vegas showgirl then used her experience to play a stripper in a in 1967’s The Graduate.

She went on to become a longtime Hollywood labour advocate, script supervisor, business agent and producer.

After filming The Graduate, and before the film had been released, she left acting to start a career in nursing, using the money she earned from the hit film toward her studies. At the time, she said: “I wanted to start exercising my brains for a change. My tassels were getting tired.”

Miller then returned to the film industry in the 1980s as an IATSE 871 script supervisor. She worked on the 1988 to 1990 syndicated series Freddy’s Nightmares and on the 1996 film Down Periscope, among other projects. The multi-talented star also served as business agent for more than a decade.

Her death comes six years after that of her husband Dick Miller. They had been married for 52 years prior to his death. Dick, who boasted a 50-year long acting career and appeared in over 180 movies, died aged 90 back in 2019. He had a heart attack in their Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, home while he was being treated for pnuemonia.

Miller met her future husband at Schwab’s Pharmacy in Hollywood, and she recognised him from the 1958 film Corman’s War of the Satellites. She is said to have said at the time: “That guy could put his shoes under my bed anytime.”

The couple had a daughter, Barbara Ann, who died previously. Lainie is survived by her granddaughter Autumn, grandson-in-law, Ceaser, and also her dog, Popeye.