Family tragedy

After she sobered up, Tewes focused her career on theatre, which gave her a new platform to showcase her talents as an actor and director.

In this time, she divorced twice and then met Robert Nadir in 1993 while performing in an Arizona Theater Company play. The two dated long-distance for a year before Tewes joined him in Seattle.

“I decided to change my whole life, which has been a wonderful thing for me,” she said in 1998. “The theater community here has been very responsive to me.”

The two married in 1996, but in 2002, Robert was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). He died the same year at age 46. It wasn’t the first time Lauren had gone through a family tragedy. In 1987, she lost her 1-month-old daughter, who passed after being born prematurely.