Jan Maxwell, the fiercely passionate, adoringly reviewed New York stage actress who earned five Tony Award nominations in seven years, including two in one season, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 61.

The death was confirmed by her husband, the actor and playwright Robert Emmet Lunney, who said the cause was leptomeningeal disease, a consequence of her struggle with breast cancer. She received the original cancer diagnosis in 2006, he said, and learned that it had returned, in metastatic form, in 2013.

Ms. Maxwell announced her retirement from the stage in 2015, telling Time Out magazine that it was because “the kinds of roles I was being offered were just — I’d been there and done that.” Her last performance was as Galactia, a 16th-century Venetian painter who fights back when her art angers the government, in “Scenes From an Execution,” at Atlantic Stage 2 in Chelsea.