Fay Wray, who screamed her way into movie history as the apple of King Kong’s eye, has died. She was 96.

Wray died Sunday night at her home in New York City, according to Rick McKay, a close friend. No cause of death was reported.

“She was fairly active up until the end,” said McKay, who directed the documentary “Broadway: The Golden Age,” which included an interview with Wray.

Wray was already a silent screen and talkie star when at age 25 she was cast by director Merian Cooper as Ann Darrow — aka “the girl” — in the 1933 film “King Kong.”

Although she made about 80 movies, her fame as a co-star to a giant ape — she referred to her unrequited lover simply as “Kong” — far outlasted the notoriety she got from her films with the pantheon of Hollywood’s leading men, including Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, William Powell and Spencer Tracy.

Well into her later years, Wray continued to travel to film events here and abroad where she was feted as the “scream queen,” although she remained surprised by the accolades she got for a performance that she hardly considered acting. “I yelled every time they said, ‘Yell,'” she said of the role, for which she was paid $10,000 for 10 weeks’ work.

Wray’s 1928 marriage to John Monk Saunders, who wrote the first film to win an Academy Award, the silent “Wings,” ended shortly before he committed suicide. In 1942, she left acting to embark on an idyllic marriage to another writer, Robert Riskin, the Academy Award-winning writer of Frank Capra comedies, including “It Happened One Night” and “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.”

Riskin died in 1955 after a long illness, an event that finally pressed Wray, by then the mother of three children, out of retirement for several years. Her third husband, physician Sanford Rothenberg, died in 1991.

She is survived by her children, Susan Riskin, of New York; Robert Riskin, of Santa Monica, Calif.; and Victoria Riskin Rintels.