LIFE
“Shark” star Jeri Ryan is acquiring a ferocious appetite. Not, for underlings, but for greasy French fries and with good reason…
The actress just announced that she is pregnant with her second child. Ryan wed French chef Christophe Emé in his hometown outside Angers, France less than three months ago and now the couple is preparing to add to their family. Ryan also has a 12-year-old son, Alex, from a previous relationship.
According to her publicist, the 39-year-old actress is due in March 2008 and is “thrilled beyond words.”
DEATH
On a much sadder note actress Miyoshi Umeki, who won an Oscar for her role as the doomed wife of an American serviceman in “Sayonara” has died of cancer. She was 78.
According to Umeki’s son, his mother passed away last week in a nursing home in Missouri.
The Japanese-born actress was the first Asian performer to win an Oscar. She made history for her performance in “Sayonara,” the 1957 film adaptation of James A. Michener’s best-selling novel. In the film, Umeki appeared opposite Red Buttons in a tragic subplot about a U.S. serviceman and a local woman who fall in love in post-World War II Japan. In the end, they commit suicide rather than split up when he is ordered to return to America.
Umeki’s other stand out role was that of Mei Li, a timid mail-order bride brought to San Francisco from China, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1958 show “Flower Drum Song.” She was nominated for a Tony for her performance in the Broadway show and two years later went on to reprise her role in the film version.
On the small screen Umeki played housekeeper Mrs. Livingston, in the ABC series, “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” which starred Bill Bixby. When the show was cancelled in the early 1970s Bixby called Umeki “the best actress I’ve ever worked with.”
Soon after “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” went off the air Umeki retired from show business. In the 1990s she moved to a small town in the Missouri Ozarks to be closer to her only son and his family.
Related Articles:
Oh Baby! More Celebrities Adding To Their Families