Elizabeth Wilson, a film, theatre, and television actress, most memorable for her role as Dustin Hoffman's mother in the "The Graduate" (1967), died May 9 at the age of 94, at her New Haven, Connecticut home, as confirmed by her friend Elizabeth Morton.

More recognizable by her face rather than her name, Wilson's nearly 7-decade career began in theatre, with her Broadway debut in 1953 in William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning play "Picnic" as a spinster schoolteacher, according to the New York Times.

Like Us on Facebook

She went on to play other critically acclaimed stage plays, and in 1972 won a Tony Award for her role in David Rabe's anti-war drama "Sticks and Bones" as a blinded Vietnam War veteran's emotionally scarred mother. In 2007, Wilson was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Elizabeth Wilson made her screen debut in the 1955 film adaptation of "Picnic," reprising her stage role. Her role as a mother in a movie did not stop in the late Mike Nichols' "The Graduate." She was also Ralph Fiennes's aristocratic mother in "Quiz Show" (1994), and the conniving mother of an Uncle Fester impostor (Christopher Lloyd) in "The Addams Family" (1991).

Probably her most substantial and famous film role is not of a mother, but of an untrustworthy and obnoxious office snitch named Roz Keith in the hit 1980 comedy "9 to 5," directed by Colin Higgins, starring alongside Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman.

Elizabeth Wilson, who attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, then studied with Sanford Meisnerat the Neighborhood Playhouse, also had a movie role in "The Goddess" (1958), in the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" (1963), as well as in Mike Nichols' "Catch-22" (1970), "The Day of the Dolphin" (1973) and "Regarding Henry" (1991).

Wilson's television career began in 1955, in Rod Serling drama "Patterns" and ended with "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" in 2002. She was nominated for an Emmy for her role in NBC's 1987 based-on-a-true-story miniseries "Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder," as a wealthy and helpless mother of a woman.

Although Wilson admitted in 2013 in an interview that she had fallen "madly in love" with two men during her career, she never married. She said that she had no desire to quit what she was doing just to stay home and raise a family.

TagsElizabeth Wilson, Elizabeth Wilson actress, The Graduate, Tony Award, Broadway