Marcia DeRousse, ‘True Blood’ Actress, Dies at 70

Marcia DeRousse, who got here to assistance from the supernatural as Dr. Patricia Ludwig on the HBO drama True Blood, died Saturday in Altadena after a protracted sickness, a publicist introduced. She was 70.

She wrote on Fb in April {that a} fall in her physician’s workplace was going to “result in my dying,” including that the spill “induced my hiatal hernia to maneuver to an space the place it’s now harmful.”

The 4-foot-4 DeRousse made her big-screen debut alongside fellow little individual Billy Barty within the Warner Bros. movie Below the Rainbow (1981), additionally starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher. She additionally was within the films Tiptoes (2002) and D.J. Caruso’s The Disappointments Room (2016).

DeRousse appeared on episodes on the Alan Ball-created True Blood throughout its second, fourth and seventh seasons.

A local of Doniphan, Missouri, DeRousse graduated from the College of Missouri and got here to Los Angeles along with her mom in 1980. She turned curious about a profession as an actor whereas educating within the Pasadena public college system.

An opportunity assembly with Barty led to her showing as one of many resort friends in Below the Rainbow, and he or she adopted with guest-starring activates ABC’s The Fall Man and NBC’s St. Elsewhere.

DeRousse, who lived in Altadena, thought of Poltergeist actress Zelda Rubinstein a mentor. She was described as “an outspoken dynamo with a definite, sharp wit,” an advocate for alternatives for the senior disabled neighborhood and a lover of cats, particularly strays.