Toronto actress and playwright Nonnie Griffin has died less than two weeks before debuting a new one-woman show.

Close friend Lorraine Heaton says Griffin passed away Friday morning in hospital of an aortic aneurysm that ruptured Tuesday. She was 85.

The seasoned stage performer was known for roles in radio, TV and the theatre.

Griffin began writing her own parts while in her 70s, starting with "Sister Annunciata's Secret," in which she played six different characters at the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She followed that with 2014's "Marilyn -- After," which imagined what Marilyn Monroe would have been like if she were alive 50 years after her death.

Griffin had been preparing to return to the stage June 19 with the self-financed production "Before Scarlett," in which she was to portray "Gone with the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell.

Heaton says Griffin "went out the way she lived her life -- with gusto, with joy, with encouragement to everybody, with just a radiant beauty."