Patricia Neal, the willowy, husky-voiced actress who won an Academy Award for 1963’s Hud and then survived several strokes to continue acting, has died at 84.

Ms Neal, who had lung cancer, died at her home in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard, said long-time friend Bud Albers.

She was already an award-winning Broadway actress when she won an Oscar for her role as a housekeeper to the Texas father (Melvyn Douglas) battling his selfish, amoral son (Paul Newman).

Less than two years after winning the Academy Award, she suffered a series of strokes in 1965 at 39. Her struggle to regain walking and talking is regarded as epic in the annals of stroke rehabilitation.

She returned to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations.

The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Centre that concentrates on helping people recover from strokes and spinal cord and brain injuries is named for her in Knoxville, where she grew up.

“She never forgot us after she went to Hollywood,” said 85-year-old Mr Albers, who graduated with Ms Neal from Knoxville High School in 1943.

Whenever she was in town, her friends would always get together and have dinner, he said. Her family let him know of her death.

“She was so courageous,” he said of her battling back from her illnesses and losing her seven-year-old daughter to measles in 1962.

“She always fought back. She was very much an inspiration.”

In her 1988 autobiography As I Am, she wrote: “Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison.” She made a grand return to the screen in 1968, winning an Oscar nomination for her performance in The Subject Was Roses.

In 1971 she played Olivia Walton in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, a made-for-TV film that served as the pilot for the CBS series The Waltons. It brought her the first of her three Emmy nominations.

In 1953 she married Roald Dahl, the British writer famed for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, James And The Giant Peach and other tales for children. They had five children and divorced in 1983. Dahl died in 1990.

Even before her own illness, her life often was touched by misfortune. Besides her daughter’s death, an infant son nearly died in 1960 when his pram was struck by a taxi.

Ms Neal also suffered a nervous breakdown, and had an ill-fated affair with Gary Cooper, who starred with her in The Fountainhead.

She and Dahl divorced after she learned he was having an affair with her best friend.

The strokes at first paralysed her and impaired her speech. After recovering, she limped and had bad vision in one eye.

A 1991 biopic about her travails starred Glenda Jackson as Ms Neal.

Among Ms Neal’s children is Tessa Dahl, who followed in her father’s footsteps as a writer. Tessa Dahl’s daughter is model and writer Sophie Dahl.