‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Guest Actress Dead at 81: RIP to Lorna Raver

Lorna Raver, a prolific actress known for her many TV guest roles, has died. She was 81.

She died on May 12, but her death was only just announced today in the In Memoriam section of SAG-AFTRA’s Summer 2025 magazine. Her cause of death has not been disclosed.

The York, Pennsylvania actress was born in 1943. She began acting after she moved to New York in the late 70s, appearing in several off-Broadway productions, before moving to Los Angeles to further her career. Her first movie role was in Donald Petrie’s Opportunity Knocks (1990), where she played the secretary of Dana Carvey’s character.

She was a frequent collaborator of TV legend David E. Kelley, appearing in several guest roles in his series The Practice, Ally McBeal, and Boston Legal. Over the course of her lengthy career, she appeared in shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Bones, Beverly Hills 90210, ER, Felicity, Star Trek: Voyager, Desperate Housewives, NYPD Blue, Felicity, Charmed, Weeds, Nip/Tuck, and a whole lot more.

Raver is best known, however, for her scene-stealing role in Sam Raimi’s 2009 horror flick Drag Me To Hell. She plays the film’s quasi-villain, Mrs. Sylvia Ganush, who cursed the protagonist to burn in hell for eternity after Ganush’s mortgage extension was denied. It was a critical and commercial success, with a $90.8 million box office gross and a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In an interview from 2014, she told author Jason Norman that she wasn’t aware of Raimi’s status as a horror icon when she auditioned for the film.

“While I knew of [Raimi’s] work from other films, I was so ignorant of the whole horror genre that I had never even heard of the Evil Dead [movies],” she said. “I was definitely interested in doing it because of Sam Raimi, but I was not fully aware of exactly what I was getting into until it happened… What I liked about the character was that she was powerful.”

Her agent, Michael Greene, gave a statement to the New York Post about her death.

“She will now fly in Heaven, not be dragged to Hell. She was an incredible lady and artist. A true chameleon, the complete opposite of this character in real life,” he said, referring to her Drag Me to Hell character.