Actress Jill Clayburgh dies at 66 (AFP)

NEW YORK (AFP) – Actress Jill Clayburgh, who was twice nominated for Oscars for her portrayals of independent women, died of leukemia, the New York Times reported. She was 66.

Clayburgh's husband, the playwright David Rabe, told the Times she died at her home in Lakeville, Connecticut Friday.

She is best remembered for her role in "An Unmarried Woman," the 1978 film about a wealthy New York woman who picks up the pieces of her life after her stockbroker husband leaves her for a younger woman.

She was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress for "An Unmarried Woman" and the 1979 film "Starting Over," with Burt Reynolds and Candice Bergen.

"In her we see intelligence battling feeling -- reason backed against the wall by pushy needs," Vincent Canby wrote in a New York Times review of "An Unmarried Woman."

The Times said she was the first of a generation of young actresses "who regularly portrayed characters sprung from the new feminist ethos: smart, capable and gritty, sometimes neurotic, but no less glamorous for all that."

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