Actor and filmmaker Lisa Blount, best known for her role as Debra Winger's best friend in An Officer and a Gentleman, has died. She was 53.

Police in Little Rock, Ark., say Blount was found dead in her home Wednesday afternoon. She had suffered from a condition similar to multiple sclerosis and had complained recently of feeling unwell, police reported.

No cause of death has been released, but police say there is no sign of foul play.

Blount earned a Golden Globe nomination and was named Favorite Female Newcomer by US magazine readers after her turn as an insecure young woman in 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman.

In the film, her boyfriend, played by David Keith, commits suicide after she tells him she is pregnant.

She also earned an Oscar for best live action short after executive producing the 2001 comedy The Accountant, a film directed by her husband, Ray McKinnon.

She also produced and starred in 2007's Randy and the Mob and 2004's Chrystal, both created by actor/writer/director McKinnon, whom she married in 1998.

Blount grew up in Jacksonville, Ark., and enrolled at the University of Arkansas at 16 despite not having a high school diploma.

Her film career began at age 17 when she was cast in the film September 30, 1955 by director James Bridges.

She played a "scream queen" in the 1980s in films such as Dead & Buried and What Waits Below and thriller Cut and Run.

She also had a series of small TV roles on The Hitchhiker; Murder, She Wrote; Moonlighting and Judging Amy. In the Fox TV series Profit, she played Jim Profit's outrageous stepmother, Bobbi Stakowski.