Hollywood publicist, pal to stars dies at 67
Nanci Ryder, a powerful Hollywood publicist and co-founder of BWR Public Relations who became close to such stars as Renée Zellweger and Courteney Cox, died Thursday of Lou Gehrig’s disease in Los Angeles. She was 67.
Ms. Ryder was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — or ALS — in 2014. The neurodegenerative disease gradually claimed her ability to walk, talk, eat and move.
Ms. Ryder’s clients — including Michael J. Fox, Reese Witherspoon, Viggo Mortensen and Sarah Michelle Gellar — blossomed into close friends. Zellweger thanked Ms. Ryder in her best actress acceptance speech when she won the Academy Award for “Judy” earlier this year. Witherspoon called her a “second mother.”
Tributes poured in on social media, including from Emmy Rossum, who called Ms. Ryder “a beacon for me in my career,” and Elizabeth Perkins, who wrote “Nancy was always on my side, kind, fierce, loyal, determined & real.”
Ms. 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,” as she was unable to speak.
“I never intended to be courageous or inspirational, but according to this award apparently I am,” Ms. 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 behind the scenes, Ms. Ryder facilitated thousands of interviews on behalf of her A-list clients and maneuvered many to glory.
Born in Orlando, Florida, she spent her youth on New York’s Long Island. She studied psychology and anthropology at C.W. Post College and moved to Los Angeles in 1979, landing a job as a talent agent at David Shapira & Associates. Stints at GoldbergEhrlich Public Relations and 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 2015. “Everything I’ve gone through, I’ve gone through with Nanci.”