Betsy Palmer, Actress Known For "Friday The 13th" Franchise, Dies At 88

You may not know Betsy Palmer by name, but her face should be instantly recognizable to any self-respecting horror fan. The actress, who cemented her name in Hollywood, playing Mrs. Vorhees in _Friday the 13th_and its sequel, died on Sunday. Her manager confirmed the sad news to the Associated Press.

Betsy Palmer, known for her role in 'Friday the 13th,' has died. http://t.co/aUBMUS1rFe pic.twitter.com/YTURFA8MLf

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 1, 2015

Palmer may have achieved her fame through the horror franchise, but as an actress, she had over 60 film credits to her name. She is most famous for playing the killer cook, aka Jason’s mom in Friday the 13th. That wasn’t her original plan, though.

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“My agent called and said, ‘How would you like to be in a movie?’” she said in an interview. “I said, ‘Great, I haven’t done a movie since the 1960s.’ […] He said, ‘It’s 10 days’ work, they’ll pay you $1,000 a day.’ I said, ‘Great, I want to buy a car. It’ll just cover the car. Oh, perfect.’ He said, ‘There’s a drawback.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘It’s a horror film.’ I said, Oh, no.’”

It wasn’t the kind of project she had planned on starring in. In the same interview, Palmer referred to the _Friday the 13th_franchise as “a piece of junk.”

In addition to Friday the 13th, Palmer appeared on numerous television series, including Murder, She Wrote, Knots Landing and Charles in Charge. She was also a regular panelist on the popular 1960s game show, I’ve Got a Secret, and the original letter turner on Wheel of Fortune.

“The thing that was so great about that time as far as my aspect of it was… I loved to improvise. I loved being scriptless… I was an actress,” she said in a 2011 interview about Wheel of Fortune. “I wasn’t just an announcer or something of that nature. That was another time. A naive time. We were like a bunch of kids.”