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Angela Paton dead: ‘Groundhog Day,’ ‘American Wedding’ actress was 86

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Angela Paton

Angela Paton, right, appears in a scene from the 1993 movie ‘Groundhog Day’ with Bill Murray.

“Groundhog Day” star Angela Paton is dead at age 86, her nephew announced to the Associated Press. The actress died Thursday in Oakland while in hospice care after a recent heart attack.

Paton was best known for playing Mrs. Lancaster, the sweet, elderly innkeeper at the Punxsutawney bed-and-breakfast where Bill Murray’s weatherman character Phil Connors stayed in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day.” As Connors relives the same day over and over, her repeated questions generate amusing interactions.

“Do you ever have deja vu, Mrs. Lancaster?” Murray’s character asks at one point.

I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen,” she replies.
She also had a memorable role in “American Wedding,” the third theatrical release in the “American Pie” franchise, where she played Jim’s (Jason Biggs) grandmother.

In this Aug. 18, 1980, file photo, actor Frank Langella, right, talks with Jerry Stiller, left, and Angela Paton at the Morosco Theater in New York.

Paton, who was mistakenly credited as “Angela Payton” for playing Faye in 1998’s “The Wedding Singer,” had nearly 100 film and TV credits, most of which occurred after her late 50s. She appeared on Grey’s Anatomy,” “Home Improvement,” “Star Trek: Voyager,” “The X-Files,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Falcon Crest,” and had roles in the films “Trapped in Paradise,” “Home for the Holidays,” “Joe Dirt” and 1997’s “Lolita.”
The AP notes she had a long stage career before breaking into film and television, performing with Syracuse University alumni Frank Langella and Jerry Stiller in “Passione” at the Morosco Theater in New York in 1980. She later founded a theater in Berkeley and, most recently, appeared in a 2012 run of “Harvey” on Broadway.