MUMBAI: Zelda Rubinstein, the 4-foot-3-inch lady artiste best known as Tangina, the psychic who tries to calm a family inhabiting a haunted house in Poltergeist, the 1982 horror film, has expired at the age of 76.

Her agent, Eric Stevens said that Rubinstein died on Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital adding that she had recently suffered a heart attack.

Rubinstein made her film debut in the 1981 comedy Under the Rainbow and went on to play roles in Sixteen Candles, Southland Tales, Teen Witch and TV show Picket Fences.

She was later seen in both the Poltergeist sequels.

Rubinstein also appeared as the mother figure in a high-profile mid-1980s AIDS public awareness campaign and was an outspoken activist for the rights of little people.