Sylvia Miles dead: Oscar-nominated Midnight Cowboy star dies, aged 94

Miles earned an Academy Award nomination for six minutes of screen time in 1969 drama

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Sylvia Miles, the Oscar-nominated actor who appeared in Midnight Cowboy and Farewell, My Lovely, has died.

Miles died during an ambulance ride to the hospital after telling a health care worker she wasn’t feeling well. The cause of death is unclear.

The news was announced by Miles’s friend Mauricio Padiha.

One of the actor’s most memorable roles arrived in John Schlesinger’s 1969 drama Midnight Cowboy. She earned an Oscar nomination despite appearing in the film for just six minutes.

In her sole scene, she plays a brassy Manhattan woman who invites an aspiring male prostitute from Texas, played by Jon Voight, up to her penthouse for sex, but ends up taking money from him instead.

“You were going to ask me for money?” Miles’s character, Cass, says as she breaks into increasingly angry mock-tears.

“Who the hell do you think you’re dealing with? ... In case you didn’t happen to notice it, you big Texas longhorn bull, I’m one hell of a gorgeous chick!”

In 1975’s Farewell, My Lovely, which starred Robert Mitchum as detective Philip Marlowe, her screen time is only slightly longer as a down-on-her-luck entertainer who swaps information for a bottle of booze.

Her appearances in real life were just as memorable for those who came across her.

“She was pretty much the same person off screen as she was on screen,” Mr Padilha said. “She was quite a character.”

Miles was born in, and became a lifelong resident of, Manhattan, where she was married and divorced three times and had no children. She is believed to have been 94 when she died.

She studied at The Actors Studio, making her name in a series of Off-Broadway roles starting in the 1950s, and moving on to movies in the 1960s.

Her film credits included 1972’s Andy Warhol-produced Heat, 1987’s Wall Street and its 2010 sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and 1988’s Crossing Delancey.

Her TV roles included guest appearances on Miami Vice, One Life to Live and Sex and the City.

Miles was a competitive chess player, according to The New York Times, which twice featured her in its coverage of the game.

And she went, it seems, to nearly every party in New York for a time, becoming as beloved for her outgoing personality and flamboyant fashion sense than as for her acting.

“She shows up at premieres, screenings, receptions, teas and charity cocktail parties,” said a 1976 article in People magazine titled, “What would a Manhattan party be without the ubiquitous Sylvia Miles?”

“I get invited because I’m fun,” Miles told People at the time. “I have a good sense of humour. I look good. I’m not bad to have at a party.”

Additional reporting by Agencies