ER actress Vanessa Marquez shot dead by police after 'pulling out a BB gun'

ER actress Vanessa Marquez has died after being shot by police who say she pointed a BB gun at them.

The 49-year-old who played Wendy Goldman in the hit medical drama between 1994 and 1997 was fatally shot by officers carrying out a welfare check, South Pasadena police said.

The actress, who also starred in film Stand and Deliver, died in hospital following the incident in her California apartment on Thursday.

Officers responded to a call from Marquez's landlord who said that she needed medical help. When they arrived she was having a seizure, Lt. Joe Mendoza with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said on Friday.

Paramedics treated Marquez who improved and began talking to three officers and a mental health clinician who spent an hour-and-a-half trying to talk her into getting medical help, Mendoza said.

But the actress later became uncooperative and appeared unable to care for herself, he said.

Mendoza said Marquez got what turned out to be a BB gun and pointed it at the officers, prompting two of them to shoot.

"It looked like a real gun," he said, adding that it's unclear where the gun was during her lengthy interaction with police.

The officers were wearing body cameras but footage won't be released for at least six months pending the investigation, Mendoza added.

Terence Towles Canote, a close friend of Marquez's, said the actress was having health and financial problems but that she showed no signs of depression or other mental troubles.

She still talked about her dream of winning an Oscar one day and was hopeful for a career comeback, he said.

"She was looking forward to life," Canote said. "This is not a woman who wanted to die."

Marquez posted extensively on Facebook and elsewhere about her health problems, saying she was terminally ill and had seizures and celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that can damage the small intestine if gluten is ingested.

In 2014, she said in an online post that she had spent her life savings on doctors and hospitals who didn't properly treat her and that she couldn't work or "do most basic everyday functions."

Marquez gained attention last year after tweeting that George Clooney helped blacklist her from Hollywood when she complained about sexual harassment and racist comments among their "ER" co-stars.

Clooney said in a statement to US Weekly at the time that he was just an actor on the show and was unaware of any effort to blacklist her.

"If she was told I was involved in any decision about her career then she was lied to," he said. "The fact that I couldn't affect her career is only surpassed by the fact that I wouldn't."