Glenne Headly, whose acting career took shape at the renowned Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and found its biggest audience in Hollywood with films like “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “Dick Tracy,” died on Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62.

The cause was complications of a pulmonary embolism, her husband, Byron McCulloch, said.

Ms. Headly moved easily from comedy to drama and from stage to screen. Not often cast in lead roles, she played her parts with a subtle, scene-stealing panache.

She was nominated twice for Primetime Emmy Awards for supporting roles in the mini-series “Lonesome Dove” (1989), in which she played Elmira, the sheriff’s wife, and the television movie “Bastard Out of Carolina” (1996), in which she played the sister of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character.

Her high-pitched, girlish voice gave her a spacey, sometimes ditsy, quality that worked well in comic roles. But for her dramatic work she could lower its register, as she did to play a prostitute in the Lanford Wilson play “Balm in Gilead,” in New York and Chicago.