Collin Wilcox-Paxton | Film and TV actress, 74

Collin Wilcox-Paxton, 74, who portrayed the false accuser in the movie classic

To Kill a Mockingbird,

died of brain cancer Oct. 14 in Highlands, N.C. She was diagnosed Aug. 11 with three brain tumors, said her husband, Scott Paxton.

The actress played Mayella Ewell in the movie based on Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Her role as the young white woman who accuses a black man of beating and raping her in her home was brief but memorable. She angrily breaks down as actor Gregory Peck, the defense attorney, suggests she lied to avoid being abused by her racist father.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, she had roles in several Broadway plays, making her debut in 1958 in the family drama The Day the Money Stopped. She had guest appearances in many television series, such as Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, The Waltons, and Little House on the Prairie.

Her roles in the 1990s included television series and movies that were filmed near her home. They included Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the inspirational TV series Christy, about a teacher in the early 1900s in remote Appalachia.

- AP