Karen Black, the actress best known for her roles in film classics such as "Easy Rider," "Five Easy Pieces" and "Nashville," died Thursday after losing her fight with cancer.
According to USA Today, the 74-year-old actress died from complications of cancer, Black was diagnosed with ampullary cancer, a rare form of the disease similar to pancreatic cancer, of the stomach in November 2010. In March, a fundraising page was set up to help raise donations for experimental treatment in Europe.
Her husband, Steven Eckleberry, who had been recording his wife's battle with cancer on Black's personal blog, announced the news on Facebook on Thursday.
"Thank you all for all your prayers and love, they meant so much to her as they did to me," the Facebook page said.
According to CNN, Black's husband posted a message to donors Wednesday, just hours before her death, explaining that over the last months her "health continued to deteriorate at an alarming pace."
"She became bed-bound: the spreading cancer having eaten away part of a vertebra and nerves in her lower back," he said.
Black, who was born Karen Ziegle,r survived weeks longer than doctors predicted, Eckleberry said.
"I can't tell you how many times doctors and nurses have pulled me aside and told me that I better start hospice, as she was about to die," he said.
According to CNN, the actress was placed in a nursing facility by the Motion Picture Television Fund recently.
Black appeared in more than 100 films and often portrayed women who were quirky and threatened, the New York Times reported. Her breakthrough role came in 1969's "Easy Rider." Black played a New Orleans prostitute who takes LSD with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
The following year she played a waitress alongside Jack Nicholson in 1970's "Five Easy Pieces" and earned a supporting-actress Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe. In 1971, Black again worked with Nicholson in "Drive." The actress was nominated for a Grammy award after portraying a country singer in "Nashville."
"Black brings to all her roles a freewheeling combination of raunch and winsomeness," Time magazine wrote about her in 1975, according to the New York Daily News. "Sometimes she is kittenish. At other times she has an overripe quality that makes her look like the kind of woman who gets her name tattooed on sailors."
Black also starred as a jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, "Family Plot," released in 1976. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Myrtle Wilson in 1974's "Great Gatsby".
Wonderful Karen Black rest in peace https://t.co/XHnfS37c9P
— mia farrow (@MiaFarrow) August 8, 2013
Black was married and divorced three times before marrying Eckelberry in 1987. According to the New York Times, the actress is survived by her son, Hunter Carson; two daughters, Celine Eckelberry and Diane Koehnemann Bay; a sister, Gail Dugan; a brother, Peter Ziegler; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Other celebrities that have passed away this year include Glee star Cory Monteith, actor and puppeteer Cosmo Allegretti, and TV actor Joe Conley.
