Priscilla Pointer Passes Away at 100: Celebrating a Century of Grace, Talent, and Timeless Performances

Stage and TV actress Priscilla Pointer, who worked for nearly four decades, died quietly on April 28, 2025, at the age of 100, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Pointer died peacefully from natural causes at Ridgefield, Connecticut, an assisted-living complex, her son David Irving reported. Pointer will be best recalled for roles in cult horror film Carrie and TV soap Dallas, but her contribution to American television and theater was much greater than that in those performances.

Priscilla Pointer was born in May of 1924 to artist parents Kenneth and Augusta Pointer in New York City. She was raised in a home of creative energy. That early training would be worth it. Even prior to her becoming a household name on television, as well as the small and big screen, she established herself on stage with acting in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Country Wife, and The Condemned of Altona. She ruled stage performances as much as it is humanly possible and soon people were head over heels in love with her understatement on stage.

Pointer’s first work on television was in 1954 as a guest star on the adventure show The New Adventures of China Smith. This led to a prosperous and diverse television career during the 1970s, guest-starred on such leading programs as McCloud, The Rockford Files, Kojak, Police Woman, and Phyllis. These guest star roles showed her range and her ability to build depth from limited screen time.

She started movie work entirely in 1976. Her initial major appearances were as cameos in a series of movies that year, such as The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Nickelodeon, and cult classic Carrie. In Carrie, she also had a stint as Mrs. Snell, Sue Snell’s mother, by her real-life daughter Amy Irving. They created an odd, landmark on-screen pair that brought a raw emotionalism to the horror film that has lasted.

Pointer’s own stage career, too, began in the 1980s. Her best decade role was Rebecca Barnes Wentworth on Emmy-winning drama shows Dallas. She worked from 1981 to 1983 as Cliff Barnes’s (Ken Kercheval) mother and became familiar to millions of American living rooms. Her character facilitated the complex weave of relationship and family plot on the show.

Besides being an actress, Pointer also made contributions to art in her own family. She was married to actor and theater director Jules Irving in 1947. They shared the fact that they produced a post-WWII army show in Europe and went on to found the Actor’s Workshop in San Francisco, which was a shared theater company within the American regional theater movement. Both were equally interested in the arts and had three children, Amy Irving, David, and Katie, all three of whom pursued careers in the arts. David directed several films, one of which was the 1987 fantasy musical film Rumpelstiltskin starring Pointer, Billy Barty, and Amy Irving. Life backstage was graced with art and love.

She and Jules were married until his death in 1979. Amy Irving simply made a sweet gesture to her mother with a beautiful Instagram post, writing, “Priscilla Pointer, stage television and film actress, and mother of David, Katie, and Amy Irving, passed peacefully in her sleep at age 100, hopefully to elope with her two loving husbands and her many dogs.” She will undoubtedly be missed. Pointer continued to work late in senescence, guest-starring in the 1990s on television sitcoms such as The Flash, ER, and Touched by an Angel. Her last significant role was in 2008 when she revisited the character for the TV-movie Sweet Nothing in My Ear, starring Jeff Daniels.

Her own legacy is not in the games that she played, but in the manner in which she played them for one lifetime always, lovely, and with one lifetime of respect for the work of acting.

She never dominated a room with a voice, but was one of its most powerfully substantial and quietly forceful. Whatever she was doing, wherever she was employed, whether on low-budget soap operas, horror films, or on stage in productions of such classic plays, Pointer brought so much truth and reality to what she was doing that she made it sound real to generations of Americans. As the world recalls Priscilla Pointer, it can be sure that she has left behind a legacy of far more than a filmography. She leaves behind an artistic family, a decades-long roll of industry awards, and an indelible model of commitment to the craft. A century-old thespian who never lost her feet but was always in step, Pointer’s life and career bear witness to grit, ability, and humility in excellence.