Actress Kim McGuire, 60, who died in a North Naples hospital Wednesday, held many titles

"There's nothing the matter with my face. I got character! " the gang moll known as Hatchet-Face snarls at a judge in the cult classic film "Cry-Baby."

The same could be said for the life of the actress who played that prickly role, Kim Diane McGuire.

McGuire, who lived in Naples with her partner, Gene Piotrowsky, died Wednesday at age 60 after a life filled with character, if not always beauty.

She developed skills as diverse as those of a dancer, lawyer, teacher, forensic interviewer and author.

But she and Piotrowsky, a former TV producer, lost everything when floods from Hurricane Katrina swept through their home in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2005. Their overwhelmed insurance company paid nothing, Piotrowsky said. After they moved to Naples two years ago, Piotrowsky, now 74, took a job to help the couple financially.

When McGuire, 60, died of complications from pneumonia Wednesday at the Physicians Regional Hospital Pine Ridge campus in North Naples, it was a surprise to everyone.

'Cry-Baby' actress Kim McGuire dead at age 60 in Naples

"The doctor said she was on this for a while, but she had only mentioned it a day or two before I took her in," Piotrowsky said of the condition. "She said she was feeling clammy, not well."

Naples resident Suzy Hixson, who has worked with Piotrowsky, recalled McGuire as a happy person.

"She was so kind," Hixson said."She never had a bad word to say about anyone."

McGuire developed a following with an almost daily Facebook blog containing inspirational sayings and meditations, appearing in them as a senior waif with large gray eyes, blond hair and a smile. Often, she was clutching a bouquet or a sign with a single word, backed by a rack of silk florals.

"We would go to Hobby Lobby and she'd pick out these flowers and signs to hold," said Piotrowsky, who served as her photographer. In earlier years, he also studied law and functioned as her law clerk, typing briefs during the years McGuire was a lawyer in Alabama and California.

Always a wisp of a woman, she "was dancing six hours a day, all aerobic," when Piotrowsky first met her, he said.

But the New Orleans native loved acting even more than dancing, and her roles in New York, including one for the Charles Winkler seat-gripper "Disturbed" (1990), led her to try out for director John Waters' "Cry-Baby." Waters already had gender-bending star Divine in mind for the role of tough-talking, even-tougher-looking Mona “Hatchet-Face” Malnorowski. But McGuire won the part.

Piotrowski said she was a "brilliant actor" whose career included roles in the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival."

But he added McGuire was interested in everything.

"She loved to go to school," he said. "I call her a professional student."

After McGuire earned a master's degree in theater and dance from the University of New Orleans, she returned to school at the Loyola University (New Orleans) School of Law.

McGuire, whose father was a public defender in New Orleans, passed bar exams in Alabama, Mississippi, California and, finally, the District of Columbia, to represent the underdog in courts. She took on cases of abused women and children and represented actors and writers in Hollywood, Piotrowsky said. Later, she taught entertainment law.

Still, the field of law she was most ardent about was children's protection.

"The Kim McGuire I knew lived and breathed children's advocacy. It was always in the forefront of her mind," said Victor Vieth, founder of Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center in Winona, Minnesota.

He said McGuire was in the center's first graduating class of child forensic interviewers and also graduated from its child advocacy counsel program.

"The child protection community is in mourning over her death," Vieth said. "We have lost a star in our constellation."

McGuire turned to writing in recent years, developing her own publishing company, Cheshire Kids, with Piotrowsky. One of her works, "Flashback Katrina: 10 Years After" (CreateSpace Publishing; 2015) details what Hurricane Katrina did to her and Piotrowsky, who had to pull her back into their home when flood waters sucked her out an open door. The two had to swim to high ground, where they huddled until rescuers found them.

She also wrote books for children, including her latest, "I'm Taller Than My Height" (CreateSpace Publishing; 2016) with tales that offer life lessons. It is at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, as are some of her other works.

The couple have no children; she is survived by her parents and one sister in New Orleans.

A private funeral is planned.

Hixson has opened an account — gofundme/ R.I.P. Kim McGuire "Hatchet-Face" — to help Piotrowsky with day-to-day needs as he tends to cremation and funeral plans.