Eve Brent | Jane in Tarzan films, 81

Eve Brent, 81, a veteran character actress whose most recognizable role was Jane to Gordon Scott's Tarzan, died Aug. 27 in Sun Valley, Calif.

Ms. Brent rebooted the character of Jane, Tarzan's civilized love interest, in the 1958 films Tarzan and the Trappers and Tarzan's Fight for Life, after Jane was left out of the two previous Tarzan movies. She said she took the part to please her son, who was then about 6. But although it raised her profile, she later concluded it had been a disastrous career move.

"I really couldn't get work as an actress because of Jane," Ms. Brent told a Tarzan fan site in 2007. "You get stereotyped, at least in the business at that time."

She spent the next 10 years or so acting in theater and playing bit parts in movies such as the comedy A Guide for the Married Man (1967), in which her character was Blowsy Blonde, and the Clint Eastwood film Coogan's Bluff (1968).

She started landing more varied movie roles in the 1970s and won a best-supporting-actress award from the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films for Fade to Black (1980), in which she played a victim of a murderous film buff.

Her later films included the Stephen King adaptation The Green Mile (1999) and Garfield (2004). Her final film, Hit List, is scheduled for release in early 2012. - N.Y. Times News Service