RIP Zelda Rubinstein (1933 – 2010)
Zelda Rubinstein speaks at a screening of Poltergeist in Santa Monica, California on June 16, 2007
RIP Zelda Rubinstein (1933 – 2010)
Poltergeist’s eccentric medium, Tangina Barrons – known in real life as Zelda Rubinstein – has died aged 76.Â
Rubinstein was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center two months ago after suffering a mild heart attack, according to her agent Eric Stevens. “She had ongoing health issues and unfortunately they finally overtook her,” he said.
On December 29, 2009 her close companion made the decision to take Rubinstein off life support due to both kidney and lung failure. It has been reported that she was survived by no immediate family members.
She was also a human rights activist. According to her Wikipedia entry:
Rubinstein became active in the fight against AIDS/HIV in 1984, long before it became chic or even acceptable for famous people to do so. She appeared in a series of advertisements, directed towards gay men specifically, promoting safe sex and AIDS awareness. Rubinstein did so at risk to her own career, especially so shortly after her rise to fame, and admitted later that she did “pay a price, career-wise”.
Her performance was one of the pillars of Tobe Hooper/Stephen Spielberg’s Poltergeist. When asked about her preparation for the character, she said:
I developed the character under the ficus tree in my living room. I did not know how to develop a character, but I decided to do something as it looked like a really good opportunity. So I hid under there and developed and equilateral triangle in my mind. The base of the triangle was her knowledge, one side was her life as a boring Odessa, Texas housewife, and the third side was her dream of becoming a dealer in Las Vegas. I kept her dead center in that triangle, and those were my guidelines. I don’t know where I got them from, but those were my mental image. That’s how I developed the character. After I screen tested I didn’t hear back for weeks, and she’d gotten so big inside me that I would have been ready to perform her under a street lamp on the street.
The world has lost a fascinating lady who played an iconic character. Remind yourself of some of her great lines in Poltergeist:
I am a meat popsicle
