Melinda Dillon, the Alabama-raised actress twice nominated for Academy Awards and who portrayed Ralphie and Randy’s mother in “A Christmas Story,” died last month, according to her obituary. She was 83.

Born Oct. 13, 1989, in Hope, Ark., Dillon grew up in Cullman, where her father worked as an oil company representative and her mother ran a beauty shop, according to a 1962 New York Daily News profile on the actress following her Broadway debut.

After her parents divorced and her mother married an Army soldier, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Germany before attending high school in Chicago.

Dillon received Academy Award nominations for best supporting actress twice in her career — for her roles in the Stephen Spielberg-directed science fiction film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in 1977 and the 1980 thriller “Absence of Malice” starring Paul Newman and Sally Field.

One of Dillon’s most notable roles was as the protective Mother Parker in “A Christmas Story.”

She retired from acting in 2007, so she did not return in the role for the remake that was released last year and featured a grown-up Peter Billingsley reprising his role as an adult Ralphie.