Gilda Radner

Gilda Susan Radner was an American comedian and actress. She was best remembered as an original cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. In these roles, Radner specialized in broad and obnoxious parodies of television stereotypes such as annoying advice specialists and news anchors. When Radner died from ovarian cancer in 1989, her legacy from Saturday Night Live established her as an important figure in the history of American comedy, and her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her wish that information about her illness could help others.

Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta , a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called Dibby , and an older brother named Michael. She attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit . Toward the end of her life, Radner wrote in her autobiography, Its Always Something, that during her childhood and young adulthood, she battled numerous eating disorders I coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years old. I have weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as 93. When I was a kid, I overate constantly. My weight distressed my mother and she took me to a doctor who put me on Dexedrine diet pills when I was ten years old.

Source: Wikipedia