--- name: "Penelope Milford" canonical: "https://film.one/person/penelope-milford" roles: ["Actor"] born: "23 March 1948" died: "14 October 2025" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 78 average_as: "actor" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-20T05:51:57.712812+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Penelope Milford Actor. Born 23 March 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Died 14 October 2025. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 23 March 1948, St. Louis, Missouri, USA - **Died:** 14 October 2025 - **Active:** 1978–1989 - **Also known as:** Penny Milford - **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar nomination - **Average Fi1m score:** 78, as actor, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1970s 76 (1), 1980s 80 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope_Milford, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q443052, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587340/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/27566 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Heathers*](https://film.one/film/heathers.md) (80) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Penelope Milford > Penelope Milford spent most of her screen career at the edge of other people's films, playing bohemian women caught in some personal or social upheaval. Twice, in *Coming Home* and *Heathers*, the edge was the best place in the picture to be. A pupil is dead, a news crew has come to Westerburg High, and Pauline Fleming, the guidance counsellor in *Heathers* (1989), has the whole cafeteria holding hands. Penelope Milford plays it without a flicker of a wink. Fleming believes in what she is doing, and believes in it a little more once the camera is on her, and Milford lets us see both at once. We laughed out loud at the funeral that comes just before, and then this scene arrived and the laugh went sour, because she never lets Fleming become a monster. She is something more common and harder to forgive: a well-meaning adult who has found a use for a dead teenager. That was the note Milford could hit better than most, the woman on the loose fringe of things who means well and is not quite trusted for it. She came out of the New York stage of the early 1970s, off-Broadway alongside Richard Gere, then Broadway in *Lenny* (1972) and *Shenandoah* (1975), where she originated Jenny Anderson. Film started small, an uncredited part in *Maidstone* (1970) and *Man on a Swing* (1974), and then came quickly: the silent-film star Lorna Sinclair opposite Rudolf Nureyev in *Valentino* (1977), and a year later Vi Munson in Hal Ashby's *Coming Home*. She was cast, again and again, as bohemian women in the middle of some upheaval, and she seems to have understood the type from the inside. Of Vi she said, "She's really not too concerned with being consistent. She's just on her own." *Coming Home* is where to see what she could do. Vi is sharp and sad, a person who has not decided what she is for, and Milford gives her a restlessness that makes the people around her look posed. There is a scene, well into the film, in which Vi dances and comes apart, and it is the one stretch of the second hour with the charge of the veterans' ward in the first. We were sorry each time Ashby cut away from her, and he cuts away often. The film keeps forgetting she is there. That is its failing, not hers, and it is a failing the industry then repeated at greater length. After *Endless Love* (1981), for Franco Zeffirelli, the film work thinned to occasional supporting parts and television, and *Heathers* was the last time a film she was in stayed in the memory. Her final screen work came in the mid-1990s; she went back to the stage once, in 2013. Two good supporting performances in two good films is not a large body of work, and we will not pretend otherwise. But both are films angrier at the grown-ups than at the young, and both needed an actor who could play the grown-up straight, with no plea for sympathy. Watch *Coming Home* for the first hour and then keep watching for her. Watch *Heathers* and notice who is holding the hands. ## Biography Penelope Milford was an American actress. She was born Penelope Dale Milford on 23 March 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri, and died on 14 October 2025. She originated the role of Jenny Anderson in the Broadway musical *Shenandoah* (1975), earning a Drama Desk Award nomination, and appeared in the Broadway production of *Lenny*. Her film roles include Lorna Sinclair in *Valentino* (1977), Vi Munson in *Coming Home* (1978), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Ingrid in *Endless Love* (1981), and Pauline Fleming in *Heathers* (1989). She also appeared in television films such as *The Burning Bed* (1984). Milford was the sister of actor and musician Kim Milford. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, hollywoodreporter.com, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Heathers* (1989), Fi1m 80, as Pauline Fleming — [page](https://film.one/film/heathers.md) - *Coming Home* (1978), Fi1m 76, as Vi Munson — [page](https://film.one/film/coming-home.md) ## Complete filmography (19) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Night of the Lawyers* (1997), as Anna Carroll - *Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2* (1996), as Woman in Woods - *Normal Life* (1996), as Adele Anderson - *Cold Justice* (1992), as Eileen - *Miss Missouri* (1990), as Ann - *Heathers* (1989), as Pauline Fleming — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/film/heathers.md) - *The Burning Bed* (1984), as Gaby - *The Golden Seal* (1983), as Tania Lee - *Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story* (1982), as Betty Clooney - *Blood Link* (1982), as Julie Warren - *Endless Love* (1981), as Ingrid - *Take This Job and Shove It* (1981), as Lenore Meade - *The Oldest Living Graduate* (1980), as Martha Ann - *Seizure: The Story of Kathy Morris* (1980), as Kathy Morris - *The Last Word* (1979), as Denise Travis - *Coming Home* (1978), as Vi Munson — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/coming-home.md) - *Valentino* (1977), as Lorna Sinclair - *Man on a Swing* (1974), as Evelyn Moore - *Maidstone* (1971), Actor ## Awards ### Academy Awards — 0 won, 1 nominated - 1979: Best Supporting Actress (nominated), for *Coming Home* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/penelope-milford