Lorna Raver dead: Drag Me to Hell and Desperate Housewives actress dies

Lorna Raver has died aged 81.

The actress, who starred in a number of huge 90s and 00s films and TV shows over the decades, died on May 12 but her death has only been announced this week.

Horror fans will best remember Raver as Mrs Ganush in demon flick Drag Me To Hell, starring Justin Long and Alison Lohman. Her character, an elderly gypsy lady, sought revenge after being denied a mortgage extension from the bank. Lohman's character had denied her request, leading Mrs Ganush to curse her.

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Speaking about the role to Dread Central back in 2009, she admitted she wasn't a horror fan.

"Originally I only read the bank scene, which seemed ordinary enough," she said. "Then, when I finally got the full script, I realized just how over the top most of the movie was."

Opening up about her ignorance of the horror genre and director Sam Raimi's past credits in the Evil Dead Franchise, she said in Jason Norman’s 2014 book Welcome to Our Nightmares: Behind the Scene With Today’s Horror Actors that she was "not fully aware of what [she] was getting into".

However, she said of Mrs Ganush: "What I liked about the character was that she was powerful.”

Raver also made cameo appearances in a number of major shows like ER, Star Trek: Voyager and Desperate Housewives over the years.

Born in York, Pennsylvania, she grew up learning the art of performing at the Hedgerow Theater in Pennsylvania. She later moved to New York City to appear in premieres of Between Daylight and Moonville and Last Days at the Dixie Girl Cafe off-Broadway. From there, she moved to Chigago as a stage actress before moving on again to LA to work in TV and life theatre. She won the LA Weekly and Drama-Logue awards for some of her performances.

In 2005, she starred as Big Kathy in Malcolm in the Middle and went on to acquire actring credits in a number of shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Nik/Tuck and NYPD Blue.

She also featured in 26 episodes of CBS' The Young and the Restless between 1997 and 2007, initially playing Helen Miller and later starring as Rebecca Kaplan in 2006. Just three years later she received critical acclaim for her performance in Drag Me To Hell.

Raver had been in a 25-year relationship with writer Yuri Rasovsky, who died in January 2012, aged 67.

Among those paying tribute today following her death include her former agent Michael Greene, who told Entertainment Weekly that he would remember her as a "beautiful lady".

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