According to her sister Mia Farrow, American actor Tisa Farrow, who starred in films like James Toback’s Fingers and William Richert’s Winter Kills, passed away. She was 72. Her brother, John Farrow, confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that she died in Rutland, Vermont. On Wednesday, Mia Farrow shared on Instagram that she “apparently died in her sleep”. “If there is a Heaven, undoubtedly my beautiful sister Tisa is being welcomed there,” she wrote in her letter. “She was the best of us; I’ve never met someone more giving and affectionate. She was full of life and never grumbled. At all.”
In the 1970 film Homer, Tisa Farrow made her screen debut as Don Scardino’s girlfriend, a high school student who was profoundly affected by the Vietnam War. Later, she starred in Lucio Fulci’s low-budget horror films Anthropophagus (1980) and Zombie (1979). Farrow portrayed a woman who has a kinky romance with a crazy recluse (Harvey Keitel) in the 1978 film Toback’s Fingers. Later, in the dark comedy thriller Winter Kills (1979), she made an appearance as a nurse. Farrow also made a fleeting cameo as a party guest in Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan.
On July 22, 1951, Theresa Magdalena Farrow—the youngest of seven children—was born in Los Angeles. Maureen O’Sullivan, an Irish actress who portrayed Jane in the Tarzan films of the 1930s, and John Farrow, an Australian director (The Big Clock and Around the World in 80 Days), were her parents. She dropped out of school in the eleventh grade and worked as a server in New York before deciding to pursue a career in acting, as per the Hollywood Reporter. In 1970, Farrow said, “I have no advantages,” to The New York Times. “I went around the city for a long time trying out for commercials, but I never got one. Every time I saw a career woman, she instantly disapproved of me because she didn’t like my sister.
Following Homer, she participated in the French-Italian-Canadian murder drama And Hope to Die (1972), which starred Jean-Louis Trintignant. Her other credits include the telefilms The Ordeal of Patty Hearst and The Initiation of Sarah, Some Call It Loving (1973), Only God Knows (1974), Strange Shadows in an Empty Room (1976), and Search and Destroy (1979). Farrow was married to producer Terry Deane and went on to become an emergency room nurse. Her son Jason, who was serving in the US Army at the time, passed away in Iraq in 2018.
In addition to Mia and John, survivors include her sisters Prudence (the subject of the Beatles song “Dear Prudence”) and Stephanie, daughter Bridget, and grandson Kylor. Michael and Patrick, her other two brothers, committed suicide in 2009 and perished in an aircraft crash in 1958. Naturally, Mia Farrow starred in many Allen films, such as Rosemary’s Baby and Peyton Place.
