Acclaimed actress in ‘Nebraska’ dies at 81

Angela McEwan began acting as a professional just a decade ago

LOS ANGELES — Though her role in Alexander Payne’s 2013 dramedy “Nebraska” was small, Angela McEwan was singled out for her wistfully sweet turn as a small-town newspaper editor who had long loved Woody (Bruce Dern) and regretted losing him to the feisty Kate (June Squibb).

McEwan, who had recently turned to acting when she got the part in “Nebraska,” died Sunday from complications of lung cancer at the age of 81.

“My mom had an amazing capacity to see good in everyone,” her son Carlos McEwan said in a statement Monday. “She believed that everyone tries to do their best within their abilities, so there is no reason to be negative.”

McEwan, who was born in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1934, had dreamed of becoming an actress when she was a child and studied at Los Angeles City College and at the University of California, Los Angeles. But then she fell in love and married Guillermo McEwan, a medical student at UCLA from Nicaragua. After they married, the couple moved to Mexico, where McEwan began to act and continued to perform in local theater productions when they moved to Temple, Texas.

Upon returning to Southern California, she earned a master’s in Spanish at UC Irvine, where she also taught before becoming a criminal court Spanish interpreter for 30 years.

When her husband retired about a decade ago, McEwan began taking acting lessons and did some episodic work on “The New Girl,” “Parks and Recreations” and other series.

“She came late in life to acting,” Payne said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2014. “I cast her off a tape. (Casting director) John Jackson and I were in Omaha and hadn’t pulled the trigger on that part. We knew we wanted someone quite special. We kept returning to the tape.”

“’I don’t know who she is, but look how sweet she is,’” Payne recalled Johnson saying after seeing McEwan’s tape.

McEwan, who had a recurring role on HBO’s “Getting On,” continued to work after she was diagnosed with cancer in October 2014. She also had a role in the indie film “The Boonville Redemption,” with Pat Boone and Diane Ladd.

A writer, McEwan’s poetry has been published in such literary magazines as “Revista Chicano Riqueña” and “Apostrophe.”

In addition to her son Carlos, she is survived by another son, William, and three grandchildren.