Valerie Perrine could make you laugh and break your heart in the same breath. The actress, who died Monday at 82 at her Beverly Hills home, built a career on roles that demanded both — from the drug-addicted stripper Honey Bruce in Bob Fosse’s Lenny to the soft-hearted moll who saves Superman from Lex Luthor’s trap.

Perrine’s death was announced by filmmaker Stacey Souther, who cared for her through her battle with Parkinson’s disease. “She faced Parkinson’s with incredible courage and compassion, never once complaining,” Souther wrote on Facebook. “The world feels less beautiful without her in it.”

She was a Las Vegas showgirl when a casting agent spotted her at a dinner party. The only headshot she had was a topless photo from her Lido de Paris days at the Stardust. It was enough.

In 1973, Perrine became the first woman to appear intentionally nude on American television in PBS’s Steambath — a scene that became a lucrative fundraising draw for the nonprofit broadcaster. The following year, her performance as Honey Bruce opposite Dustin Hoffman in Lenny won her the best actress prize at Cannes and an Academy Award nomination.

But it was Miss Eve Teschmacher — Lex Luthor’s glamorous, slightly conflicted henchwoman in 1978’s Superman and its sequel — that made her immortal to a generation. Her deal with the Man of Steel to save her mother remains one of the superhero genre’s most human moments.

The career had its bumps. Can’t Stop the Music, the 1980 Village People quasi-biopic, helped inspire the Golden Raspberry Awards. “It ruined my career,” Perrine said. “I moved to Europe after, I was so embarrassed.” She returned for roles alongside Michael Caine and Mel Gibson, but worked less frequently in later decades.

Born in Galveston, Texas, in 1943 to a military family, Perrine never married or had children. Her brother Ken survives her, as does a legacy of boundary-pushing performances delivered with wit and warmth.

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