R.I.P. Linda Lavin, Broadway star and TV's Alice

Linda Lavin, the Tony-winning Broadway actor and star of the popular ’70s sitcom Alice, has died. Her representative told Deadline she died on Sunday unexpectedly due to complications from recently discovered lung cancer. She was 87 years old. 

Linda Lavin began performing as a child and went on to major in theater in college. In the 1950s, she became a member of America’s first improvisational theater, the Compass Players (members of which would go on to launch The Second City). After moving to New York she embarked on a Broadway career in the ’60s, notably featuring in 1966’s It’s A Bird…It’s A Plane…It’s Superman and earning her first Tony nomination in 1970 for the play Last Of The Red Hot Lovers. Over the course of her career, she was nominated a total of six times and won once, taking the trophy for Best Leading Actress in a Play in 1987 for Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound. 

On screen, she appeared in numerous films (from Damn Yankees! to The Muppets Take Manhattan to The Ring), but was best known as a television actor. She had various guest appearances before landing a recurring role on Barney Miller; eventually, she was cast as the lead in Alice, a sitcom based on the Martin Scorsese film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Alice ran from 1976 to 1985 and earned her two Golden Globe awards and an Emmy nomination.  

Lavin continued to work steadily on stage and screen, and was particularly active in television over the last 10 years. (“There used to be a saying in the industry that if you made it to 70, things would start picking up,” she told The New York Times in 2014. “They were right. I have, and they did.”) She starred on the short-lived series Sean Saves The World, 9JKL, Santa Clarita Diet, and B Positive. Most recently, she was a guest star on Elsbeth, appeared in the Netflix show No Good Deed, and was slated to star in the upcoming series Mid-Century Modern alongside Matt Bomer and Nathan Lane. (“Working with Linda was one of the highlights of our careers,” that show’s executive producers Max Mutchnick, David Kohan, and James Burrows said in a statement via Deadline. “She was a magnificent actress, singer, musician, and a heat seeking missile with a joke. But more significantly, she was a beautiful soul. Deep, joyful, generous and loving. She made our days better. The entire staff and crew will miss her beyond measure. We are better for having known her.”)

“That’s what I’m really all about now: Am I gonna have a good time? Otherwise, I ain’t doing it!” Lavin told The Daily Jeffersonian in 2017. “I have a wonderful life. I have a husband [Steve Bakunas]. A little dog. A great house. I have financial security. Friends. I love to cook. I love to travel. I love to sit. But I don’t sit too well. And when I read a script that I love, I have to be there. ‘Cause it’s what I do. It’s very much who I am. I want to be in the room where it happens.”