Nan Martin, a stage, TV and film actress who played Ali MacGraw's snobbish mother in "Goodbye, Columbus" and was a mainstay on the Southern California theater scene for decades, has died. She was 82.

Ms. Martin, who suffered from emphysema, died Thursday at her home in Malibu, Calif., said her son Casey Dolan.

Among Ms. Martin's Broadway credits are a Tony-nominated role in Archibald MacLeish's "J.B." (1958-59), directed by Elia Kazan; "Under the Yum Yum Tree" (1960-61); and Tennessee Williams' "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" (1976). She also was a mainstay actress in Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park productions in New York City in the early 1960s.

For 50 years, beginning in 1955, Ms. Martin amassed scores of television credits -- including episodes of "The Untouchables," "The Twilight Zone," "NYPD Blue" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

She also played the supporting role of Mrs. Louder on "The Drew Carey Show" and appeared in more than two dozen films, including "Toys in the Attic," "For Love of Ivy" and "Shallow Hal."

In the 1969 comedy-drama "Goodbye, Columbus," Ms. Martin played opposite Jack Klugman as Mrs. Ben Patimkin, Ms. MacGraw's unflattering, nouveau-riche mother, who despises her daughter's unambitious new boyfriend, played by Richard Benjamin.

"She was so aloof with me during the shooting," Ms. MacGraw said of Ms. Martin in her autobiography, "Moving Pictures," "that it wasn't until the last day that I realized her behavior had all been in character."

Mothers, in all their diversity, became a staple of Ms. Martin's career, which also included playing lawyer Douglas Brackman's dying mother on "L.A. Law" and fiendish Freddy Krueger's mother (Sister Mary Helena/Amanda Krueger) in "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors."

The maternal roles frequently extended to the stage. In reviewing Tennessee Williams' "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" on Broadway in 1976, then-New York Times critic Clive Barnes wrote that Ms. Martin "glitters like a bejeweled snake as the awful mother."

Born in Decatur, Ill., on July 15, 1927, Ms. Martin was raised in Santa Monica, Calif. She was attending the University of California, Los Angeles, part time when she was chosen for a role in a campus production of "The Gentle People."

Working as a model for fashion designer Adrian, she saved enough money to go to New York, where she made her Broadway debut in 1950, playing a supporting role in the short-lived "A Story for a Sunday Evening."

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