‘ER’ Actress Mary Mara Dies Aged 61 in Apparent Drowning: Police

A police officer in the Brooklyn borough of New York City in a file photo. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

American actress Mary Mara has died after apparently drowning in the St. Lawrence River over the weekend, according to reports.

Mara drowned while she was swimming in the river, according to a statement from New York State Police on June 27, citing its preliminary investigation.

The television star, 61, had been visiting her sister, according to her brother-in-law Scott Dailey.

Her body was discovered by troopers at around 8 a.m. on Sunday after they received a call for a possible drowning.

The preliminary investigation into her death showed no signs of foul play, officials said. Her body was taken to the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office in New York for an autopsy.

Mara, who lived in Cape Vincent, was a Syracuse native.

She appeared on the television series “ER,” “Hope & Gloria,” “NYPD Blue,” “The West Wing,” “Ray Donovan,” “Law & Order,” “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Lost,” and “Shameless,” along with dozens more.

She has also appeared in the television films “In the Blink of an Eye” on CBS and “Indictment,” while her feature film credits include “Mr. Saturday Night,” “True Colors,” “Blue Steel,” “Just Looking,” “Love Potion #9” in which she appeared opposite Sandra Bullock, and “The Hard Way,” where she starred alongside Michael J. Fox.

Mara also had an extensive stage repertoire which included performances in “Kindertransport,” “Dream of a Common Language,” and “Mad Forest” for the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, as well as in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Twelfth Night,” which co-starred Hollywood giants Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum.

‘She Will Be Missed’

Mara also established the theater company HART (Haight Ashbury Repertory Theatre), according to her IMDb page.

The actress most recently starred the 2020 movie “Break Even,” which follows a group of four friends who discover millions of dollars in cash on a remote island, only to find out later that it was left by the Drug Enforcement Administration for a cartel “in a rogue deal.”

“Mary was one of the finest actresses I ever met,” Craig Dorfman, her manager, said in a statement to Variety. “I still remember seeing her onstage in 1992 in ‘Mad Forest’ off-Broadway. She was electric, funny, and a true individual. Everyone loved her. She will be missed.”

American actor and director John Lindstrom said in a statement on Monday that he was “crushed” to learn of Mara’s “untimely passing” and revealed that the actress had gone through chemotherapy to treat cancer.

“We performed together back in 2008 in Malcolm Danare’s ‘In Heat’ at the Lost Playhouse in LA,” Lindstrom wrote. “She was plowing through the aftereffects of Chemo. Brave, brilliant, Uber-talented. Earth will be much less-colorful without her. R.I.P.”