Christine White dies in a nursing home in Washington at the age of 86

Actress Christine White, who played a calming wife on a classic 1963 Twilight Zone episode that featured a young William Shatner, has died at age 86.

Christine White portrayed Julia Wilson in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet in which her husband Bob, portrayed by William Shatner, becomes unnerved after seeing a gremlin on the wing of the mid-flight plane.

The tension mounts throughout the episode as Bob has just returned from a sanitarium following a nervous breakdown six months prior that also occurred on a plane.

The situation becomes tense as the gremlin starts pulling wires from a wing panel and jumps out of view each time someone else looks out the window.

Show host Rod Serling told viewers early in the episode that Bob’s destination on the flight was the “darkest corner of the Twilight Zone”.

Christine White died on April 14 in a nursing home in Washington, according to a death notice published earlier this month in The Carroll County Times in Maryland, according to a report by The New York Times.

She was born in Washington and moved to New York to pursue a career in theatre after graduating in 1947 with a degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Christine White made it to Hollywood by the 1950s and appeared on TV shows and in the movies into the 1970s.

She had acting roles in Bonanza, Perry Mason, The Rifleman, The Untouchables and Father Knows Best during her career.

Her survivors include numerous nieces and nephews.

Christine White in the classic Twilight Zone episode does her best to soothe her increasingly agitated husband as the plane travels in stormy, lightning-filled weather.

Fearing for the safety of the plane’s passengers, Bob lifts a sleeping policeman’s gun and opens the emergency exit.

He’s nearly blown away, but fires and strikes the gremlin.

While Bob is being taken away on a gurney, Rob Serling promises he won’t be confined for long as the viewer sees the wing panel ripped by the gremlin.

William Shatner, who went onto fame as Capt. James T. Kirk on television’s Star Trek, posted a Twitter message on Sunday saying that he was thinking about Christine White’s family.