Winters died of heart failure early Saturday at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist Dale Olson said. She had been hospitalised in October after suffering a heart attack.

The actress sustained her long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. Starting as a nightclub chorus girl, advanced to supporting roles in New York plays, then became famous for her sensuous roles in movies.

A devotee of the Actors Studio, she switched to serious roles as she matured. Her Oscars were for her portrayal of mothers. Still working well into her 70s, she had a recurring role as Roseanne's grandmother on the 1990s TV show Roseanne.

In 1959's The Diary of Anne Frank, she was Petronella Van Daan, one of eight real-life Jewish refugees in World War II Holland who hid for more than a year in cramped quarters until she was found and sent to the Nazi death camps. The socially conscious Winters donated her Oscar statuette to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. In 1965's Patch of Blue, she portrayed a hateful, foul-mouthed mother who tries to keep her blind daughter, who is white, apart from the kind black man who has befriended her.

Among her other notable films: Night of the Hunter, I Am a Camera, Odds Against Tomorrow, Lolita, The Chapman Report, The Greatest Story Ever Told, A House is Not a Home, Alfie, Harper, Stepping Out and Over the Brooklyn Bridge.