Oscar Winner Patty Duke Dies At Age 69

Via USA Today:

Patty Duke, the teen who won an Oscar for The Miracle Worker and later played “identical cousins” in her own TV sitcom, has died. She was 69. The news was confirmed Tuesday by one of her representatives, Mitchell Stubbs. “Anna ‘Patty Duke’ Pearce passed away this morning March 29, 2016 at 1:20 am,” his statement read. “Her cause of death was sepsis from a ruptured intestine. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a friend, a mental health advocate and a cultural icon. She will be missed.” Acclaimed for her acting (her career dates back to the late 1950s), Duke became best known in later life as an advocate for mental health issues, after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982 and wrote about it in her 1987 autobiography.