Double Oscar-winner Shelley Winters dies

LOS ANGELES - US actress Shelley Winters, a two-time Academy Award winner, died at a Southern California nursing home early today, a spokeswoman said. She was 85.

Winters died at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills at about 6.15am Saturday local time (3.15am Sunday NZT), a spokeswoman with the centre said.

She declined to disclose the cause of death.

Winters was hospitalised in October after suffering a heart attack.

In 1959, she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the slobbish Mrs Van Daan hiding with others from the Nazis in The Diary of Anne Frank.

After a variety of other movies, she won again playing the violent mother of a blind girl in A Patch of Blue (1965).

- REUTERS