Patricia Neal, the willowy, husky-voiced actress who won an Academy Award for 1963's “Hud” and then survived several strokes to continue acting, died on Sunday. She was 84. Neal had lung cancer and died surrounded by her family at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. Neal was already an award-winning Broadway actress when she won her Oscar for her role as a housekeeper to the Texas father (Melvyn Douglas) battling his selfish, amoral son (Paul Newman). Less than two years later, she suffered a series of strokes in 1965 at age 39. Her struggle to once again walk and talk is regarded as epic in the annals of stroke rehabilitation. She returned to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations. In her 1988 autobiography, “As I Am,” she wrote, “Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison.” Neal projected force that almost crackled on the screen. Her forte was drama, but she had a light touch that enabled her to do comedy, too. She had the female leads in the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand's novel “The Fountainhead,” the classic 1951 science fiction film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and Elia Kazan's 1957 drama “A Face in the Crowd.” She made a grand return to the screen after her strokes in 1968, winning an Oscar nomination for her performance in “The Subject Was Roses.” In 1953, she married Roald Dahl, the British writer famed for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and others. They had five children and divorced in 1983 after she learned he was having an affair with her best friend, and he died in 1990.
