Miss Cleo, famous '90s infomercial psychic, dead at 53

Youree Dell Harris, best known for portraying the Jamaican psychic Miss Cleo in late-1990s infomercials, died in Palm Beach, Florida, of cancer. She was 53.

Born in Los Angeles, Harris was hired by the Psychic Readers Network in the late 1990s to play Miss Cleo. The infomercials featured her catchphrase "Call me now!" and claimed the readings were free. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission said, the toll-free number clients called was actually a 900 number, and they were charged $4.99 a minute; nearly six million people were charged on average $60 per call. The parent company of the Psychic Readers Network reached a settlement with customers in 2002, and with the Miss Cleo character retired, Harris went on to provide the voice for a character in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

After Harris came out as a lesbian, she became a gay rights activist, and she also appeared in the 2014 documentary Hotline. "She was smart as a whip and very intuitive," Tony Shaff, the film's producer, told USA Today. "There was so much negativity surrounding psychic hotlines that she wanted to tell her personal story." Catherine Garcia

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