Actress Lorna Raver, 81, died on May 12, The Hollywood Reporter announced today (Aug. 13). The stage, screen at TV actress was best known for playing concentration camp survivor Rebecca Kaplan on The Young and the Restless, and a vengeful witch in Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (which, in fact, she does). Raver appeared onstage Off-Broadway, as well as in Chicago and L.A. She made her film debut rather late in life (1990), and through her 2016 retirement appeared in such movies and TV shows as The Practice, Beverly Hills 90210, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Judging Amy, Star Trek: Voyager, Gilmore Girls, Charmed, Desperate Housewives, Nip/Tuck, and Grey’s Anatomy (she played judges in 11 of her vehicles). “I can’t say exactly why I wanted to become an actor,” Raver told interviewer Matt J. Horn. “The yen was just always there. It was only after I became an actor that I learned what I love about it: I love the chance to live multiple lives and I’m stimulated by the work of developing the discipline, skill and openness one needs in order to inhabit those other lives. I had a wonderful acting teacher when I began studying who said, ‘Don’t become an actor unless you’re willing to make a fool of yourself.’” Raver was married (from 1987 till his death in 2012) to actor Yuri Rasovsky.
