New York, July 26 (IANS): Marni Nixon, who gained fame as a "ghost singer" for stars like Deborah Kerr in "The King and I", Natalie Wood in "West Side Story" and Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady", is dead. She was 86.

Nixon died on Sunday in Manhattan, The New York Times reports.

The cause was breast cancer, said Randy Banner, a student and friend. A California native, Nixon had lived in Manhattan, on the Upper West Side, for more than 40 years.

Nixon was throughout the 1950s and 1960s the unseen - and usually uncredited - singing voice of the stars in a spate of celebrated Hollywood films. 

She also sang for Jeanne Crain in "Cheaper by the Dozen", Janet Leigh in "Pepe" and Ida Lupino in "Jennifer". 

Before her Hollywood days and long afterward, Nixon was an acclaimed concert singer, a specialist in contemporary music who appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; a recitalist at Carnegie, Alice Tully and Town Halls in New York; and a featured singer on one of Leonard Bernstein's televised young people's concerts.

Survivors include two daughters, three sisters, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her son Andrew Gold died in 2011.