Hollywood power publicist battled ALS for six years

Nanci Ryder, a powerful Hollywood publicist and cofounder of BWR Public Relations who became close to such stars as Renée Zellweger and Courteney Cox, has died at her home in L.A. of Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was 67.

Ryder was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — or ALS — in 2014.

The neurodegenerative disease gradually claimed her ability to walk, talk, eat and move. Her death Thursday was announced by publicist Lynda Dorf.

Ryder’s clients — including Michael J. Fox, Reese Witherspoon, Viggo Mortensen and Sarah Michelle Gellar — became close friends. Zellweger thanked Ryder in her best actress acceptance speech when she won the Academy Award for “Judy” this year.

Witherspoon called her a “second mother.”

Tributes poured in, including from Emmy Rossum, who called Ryder “a beacon for me in my career,” and Elizabeth Perkins, who wrote, “Nancy was always on my side, kind, fierce, loyal, determined & real.”

Ryder was given the 2018 ALS Hero Award, and her acceptance speech was read by one of her best friends, Don Diamont from CBS’ “The Young and the Restless”

and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“I never intended to be courageous or inspirational, but according to this award apparently I am,” Ryder wrote. “So I ask you all today to promise me that — no matter what — that you will never, ever give up. That is another thing that ALS cannot take away — our will to keep going.”

During her 30-year-plus career, Ryder facilitated thousands of interviews on behalf of her clients and maneuvered many to glory.

Ryder was born in Orlando, Fla., and spent her youth on New York’s Long Island. She studied psychology and anthropology at C.W. Post College and moved to L.A. in 1979, landing a job as a talent agent at David Shapira & Associates. Stints at Goldberg-Ehrlich Public Relations & Management and Michael Levine Public Relations followed, before she formed Nanci Ryder

Public Relations in 1984, with Fox as her first client.

“I was Nanci’s first client when she was working out of her apartment with a couple of boxes of files and cleaning up after her dog,” Fox told the Hollywood Reporter.

In 1987, she co-founded the firm BWR Public Relations with Paul Baker and Larry Winokur.

Ryder married and divorced once in her 20s and had no children, siblings or relatives.