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Oscar-winning actress Patty Duke dies at 69

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  • ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Academy and Emmy award-winning actress, Patty Duke appeared during a March 2010 news conference at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, Calif. Duke, who won an Oscar as a child at the start of an acting career that continued through her adulthood, died today of sepsis from a ruptured intestine. She was 69.

  • ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Actress Patty Duke was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in Aug. 2004. Duke, who won an Oscar as a child at the start of an acting career that continued through her adulthood, died today of sepsis from a ruptured intestine. She was 69.

  • ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Actress Patty Duke, 16, accepted the Oscar as best supporting actress for her work in “The Miracle Worker” at the annual Academy Awards in Santa Monica, Calif. in April 1963. Duke, who won an Oscar as a child at the start of an acting career that continued through her adulthood, died today of sepsis from a ruptured intestine. She was 69.

NEW YORK » Patty Duke, who won an Oscar as a teen for “The Miracle Worker” and maintained a long and successful career throughout her life while battling personal demons, has died at the age of 69.

Duke’s agent, Mitchell Stubbs, says the actress died early this morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine. She died in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, according to Teri Weigel, the publicist for her son, actor Sean Astin.

Duke, born Anna Marie Pearce, followed on her early success playing the young Helen Keller with a popular sitcom, “The Patty Duke Show,” which aired for three seasons in the mid-1960s. She played dual roles under an unconventional premise: identical cousins living in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

In 2015, she played twin roles again: as a pair of grandmas on an episode of “Liv and Maddie,” a series on the Disney Channel.

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