Iconic 'Mrs Robinson' dies of cancer

Anne Bancroft, who played Mrs Robinson alongside Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, has died from cancer.

The 73-year-old actress first found fame when she won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.

She had been awarded a Tony for creating the Broadway role of poorsighted Annie Sullivan, teacher of the deaf and blind Keller, and repeated her portrayal in the film version.

Despite her Academy Award and four other Oscar nominations, The Graduate overshadowed her other achievements.

In 2003 she admitted that nearly everyone tried to discourage her from undertaking the 1967 role 'because it was all about sex with a younger man'.

She viewed the character as possessing unfulfilled dreams but having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband. However, she also complained that the film dominated the public's view of her.

Bancroft was born Anna Maria Italiano in 1931 in New York's Bronx, and got her start in movies in the 1950s.

As live TV drama flourished, she appeared in 50 shows in two years.

After several B pictures, she moved to Broadway in 1958 and won the first of two Tony awards opposite Henry Fonda in Two For The Seesaw. Following an unhappy marriage to builder Martin May, Bancroft married comediandirectorproducer Mel Brooks in 1964.

Ason, Maximilian, was born in 1972 and the couple never parted. Bancroft was in three of Brooks' comedies. It was she who suggested he make a stage musical of his movie The Producers.

She said that, when he was afraid of writing a full-blown musical: 'I sent him to an analyst.' Other notable roles included actress Madge Kindle in The Elephant Man and Anthony Hopkins' penpal in 84 Charing Cross Road.

Bancroft died of uterine cancer in New York on Monday.