LOS ANGELES (AP) — Teri Garr, the idiosyncratic comedic actor who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley films to co-star of favorites like “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died. She was 79.

Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said. Garr has struggled with other health problems in recent years and underwent surgery to repair an aneurysm in January 2007.

Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig called her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more.” screenwriter Cinco Paul saying, “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”

The actor, sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, seemed destined for show business from her youth.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began taking dance lessons at age 6, and by age 14 she was dancing with the ballet companies of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She was 16 when she joined the road company of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in small roles in films.

She recalled in a 1988 interview how she won the role of “West Side Story.” After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in different clothes and was accepted.

From there, the blonde, statuesque Garr found steady work dancing in films, appearing in the chorus of nine Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout” and “Clambake.”

She also appeared in numerous television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer on the rock and roll music show “Shindig,” TAMI’s rock concert and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

Her big screen break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation.” That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire her to play Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in ” Young Frankenstein’ from 1974 – if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had a German woman named Renata make wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.

The film established her as a talented comedy performer, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael calling her “the funniest neurotic giddy lady on screen.”

Her big smile and off-center appeal helped her roles in “Oh God!” opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie” in which she played the girlfriend Dustin Hoffman loses to Jessica Lange and discovers he has been dressing up as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the supporting actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)

Although she is best known for her comedy, Garr showed in films such as ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, ‘The Black Stallion’ and ‘The Escape Artist’ that she could handle drama just as well.

“I would love to do ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I never got the chance,” she once said, adding that she had become typecast as a comedic actor.

She had a sense of spontaneous humor and often played David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” early in the series.

Her appearances were so frequent, and the couple’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time rumors circulated that they were in a romantic relationship. Years later, Letterman credited those early performances with making the show a hit.

It was also during those years that Garr began to feel “a little squeaking or tapping” in her right leg. It started in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999, the symptoms had become so severe that she consulted a doctor. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

For three years, Garr did not disclose her illness.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t get a job,” she explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh my God, the person has two days to live.'”

After going public, she became a spokeswoman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and gave humorous speeches at meetings in the US and Canada.

“You have to find your center and roll with the punches, because that’s hard: making people feel sorry for you,” she noted in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m okay is exhausting.”

She also continued acting, appearing on ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’, ‘Greetings From Tucson’, ‘Life With Bonnie’ and other TV shows. She also had a brief recurring role on ‘Friends’ in the 1990s as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. After several failed romances, Garr married contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.

In her 2005 autobiography, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood,” Garr explained her decision not to talk about her age.

“My mother taught me that showbiz people never tell their real age. She never revealed hers or my father’s,” she wrote. California voting records listed her date of birth as December 11, 1947.

She said she was born in Los Angeles, although most reference books mention Lakewood, Ohio. As her father’s career declined, the family, including Teri’s two older brothers, lived with relatives in the Midwest and East.

The Garrs eventually moved back to California and settled in the San Fernando Valley, where Teri graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and drama for two years at California State University, Northridge.

Garr recalled in 1988 what her father had told his children about pursuing a career in Hollywood.

“Don’t get involved in this business,” he told them. “It’s the lowest. It’s humiliating for people.”

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AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.