Jun 8, 7:19 AM EDT
Actress Anne Bancroft Dies at Age 73
By DINO HAZELL
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- In a long list of memorable film and stage roles, Anne Bancroft was best known for her role as Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate." It was a part she almost didn't take.
She said in 2003 that nearly everyone discouraged her from playing the role of Dustin Hoffman's middle-aged seductress "because it was all about sex with a younger man." Yet Bancroft saw something deeper, viewing the character as having unfulfilled dreams and having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband.
"Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary."
Friends recalled Bancroft as anything but ordinary Tuesday, a day after the actress died at the age of 73. She died of uterine cancer, according to John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, producer Mel Brooks.
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