Lisa Spoonauer, who attracted attention for her role in the award-winning 1994 movie “Clerks” but stopped acting shortly afterward, died on May 21 at her home in Jackson Township, N.J. She was 44.

Her death was confirmed by the George Hassler Funeral Home in Jackson Township, which did not specify the cause.

In “Clerks,” Kevin Smith’s first movie, Ms. Spoonauer played Caitlin Bree, who gets back together with her high school boyfriend, Dante Hicks, one of the two main characters, played by Brian O’Halloran.

The very low-budget “Clerks,” set in the New Jersey convenience and video stores where Mr. Smith had worked in real life, won accolades at the Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals and was a surprise box-office success. Reviewing it in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called it “a buoyant, bleakly funny comedy.”