American actor Jennifer Runyon, known for her roles in the 1980s comedy Ghostbusters and the sitcom Charles in Charge, died on Friday. She was 65.
Runyon’s death was confirmed by close friend and Bewitched star Erin Murphy, who wrote on Sunday: “So sad to share that my friend Jennifer Runyon Corman has passed away after a brief battle with cancer. Some people you just know you’ll be friends with before you even meet. She was a special lady. I’ll miss you Jenn. My thoughts are with your family and beautiful children.”
Shortly before going private, a post on Runyon’s own Facebook account also announced her death, according to ABC7.
“This past Friday our beloved Jennifer passed away, it was a long and arduous journey that ended with her surrounded by her family,” it read.
Born in Chicago on 1 April 1960, Runyon grew up in a show-business family. Her father, Jim Runyon, was a radio announcer and disc jockey, while her mother, Jane Roberts, was an actor. She began acting professionally in the late 1970s and made her film debut in the 1980 slasher film To All a Goodnight, which helped launch a steady career in television and film throughout the decade.
Her most recognisable work came during the mid-1980s. In 1984 she appeared in Ivan Reitman’s hugely successful supernatural comedy Ghostbusters, a film that went on to become a defining pop-culture phenomenon of the decade. Runyon played a young woman who meets Bill Murray’s character, Dr Peter Venkman, while he is conducting an early paranormal experiment at Columbia University.
Around the same time, she also took on a prominent television role as Gwendolyn Pierce in the first season of the sitcom Charles in Charge, which followed a college student working as a live-in caretaker for a family’s children.
Runyon also appeared in a number of television programmes that were staples of American network schedules in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Another World, Quantum Leap, The Fall Guy, Magnum, PI, Murder, She Wrote, and Beverly Hills, 90210.
Her film credits included the comedy Up the Creek (1984), the drama The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), and the television movie A Very Brady Christmas (1988), in which she played the youngest Brady, Cindy.
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In 1991 she married Todd Corman, a basketball coach who also worked in film and television production, and the couple later had two children, Wyatt and Bayley.
Bayley posted a tribute to her mother on Instagram, writing: “All of the best parts of me came from you. I would give anything for one more day together.”
In 2016, Runyon shared that she had retired from Hollywood to raise her children.
“We moved to Idaho and Oregon. We were gone for about 10 years and had our kids, and we moved to California 10 years later because our parents were getting older, and we felt it was time to come home and spend time with our parents,” she said.
Willie Aames, who played Buddy Lembeck on Charles in Charge for all five seasons, mourned Runyon’s death, describing her as “more than a friend”.
“She was my dear dear friend, muse, and encourager. We shared family Christmases together, vacations, weekends, lunches and dinners together. We did shows together, but most of all – we laughed. That was Jenn – even up until her last weeks.”
