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Oscar-nominated 'Midnight Cowboy' actress Sylvia Miles dies

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Oscar-nominated 'Midnight Cowboy' actress Sylvia Miles dies
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Oscar-nominated 'Midnight Cowboy' actress Sylvia Miles dies

2019-06-13 09:15 Last Updated At:09:30

Sylvia Miles, an actress and Manhattan socialite whose brief, scene-stealing appearances in the films "Midnight Cowboy" and "Farewell, My Lovely" earned her two Academy Award nominations, died Wednesday.

Miles died in an ambulance in New York on the way to a hospital after complaining to a home health care worker that she wasn't feeling well, her friend, fashion-industry publicist Mauricio Padilha, told The Associated Press. The cause is not yet clear.

Accounts of Miles' age vary widely. Padilha and other sources say she was 94. Past reporting from the AP puts her age at 86.

Miles was a veteran actress but not a widely known name when she appeared onscreen for about six minutes in 1969's "Midnight Cowboy." 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' 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.

The fleetingly brief roles both got her Oscar nominations.

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," 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 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 in 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 humor. I look good. I'm not bad to have at a party."

Even after the 9/11 attacks, when the city was in a state of fear and mourning for months, she was quick to start socializing again, attending a Broadway opening just over a week later.

"Honey, this is a known jungle to me," she told the AP outside the play. "I am not afraid of anything. The animals in this jungle I can handle."

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton .

New Jersey Transit train engineers went on strike Friday, leaving an estimated 350,000 commuters in New Jersey and New York City to seek other means to reach their destinations or consider staying home.

The walkout comes after the latest round of negotiations on Thursday didn’t produce an agreement. It is the state’s first transit strike in more than 40 years and comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.

“We presented them the last proposal; they rejected it and walked away with two hours left on the clock," said Tom Haas, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri described the situation as a “pause in the conversations.”

“I certainly expect to pick back up these conversations as soon as possible,” he said late Thursday during a joint news conference with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “If they’re willing to meet tonight, I’ll meet them again tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I’ll do it again. Because I think this is an imminently workable problem. The question is, do they have the willingness to come to a solution.”

Murphy said it was important to “reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and at the same time affordable to New Jersey’s commuters and taxpayers.”

"Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s fiscal realities,” Murphy said.

The announcement came after 15 hours of non-stop contract talks, according to the union. Picket lines are expected to start at 4 a.m. Friday.

NJ Transit — the nation’s third-largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. The walkout halts all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.

The agency had announced contingency plans in recent days, saying it planned to increase bus service, but warned riders that the buses would only add “very limited” capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and would not start running until Monday. The agency also will contract with private carriers to operate bus service from key regional park-and-ride locations during weekday peak periods.

However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengers — only about 20% of current rail customers — so it urged people who could work from home to do so if there was a strike.

Even the threat of it had already caused travel disruptions. Amid the uncertainty, the transit agency canceled train and bus service for Shakira concerts Thursday and Friday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The parties met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the matter, and a mediator was present during Thursday’s talks. Kolluri said Thursday night that the mediation board has suggested a Sunday morning meeting to resume talks.

Wages have been the main sticking point of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen that wants to see its members earn wages comparable to other passenger railroads in the area. The union says its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and says an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000.

NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.

Kolluri and Murphy said Thursday night that the problem isn’t so much whether both sides can agree to a wage increase, but whether they can do so under terms that wouldn’t then trigger other unions to demand similar increases and create a financially unfeasible situation for NJ Transit.

Congress has the power to intervene and block the strike and force the union to accept a deal, but lawmakers have not shown a willingness to do that this time like they did in 2022 to prevent a national freight railroad strike.

The union has seen steady attrition in its ranks at NJ Transit as more of its members leave to take better-paying jobs at other railroads. The number of NJ Transit engineers has shrunk from 500 several months ago to about 450 today.

Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden in Seattle and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

An electronic display advises commuters of NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An NJ Transit train pulls into the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An NJ Transit train pulls into the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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