Actress Linda Lavin, best known for her role in the classic sitcom Alice, passed away on Sunday at the age of 87.
A spokesperson for the Golden Globe-winning star confirmed she had died unexpectedly in Los Angeles due to complications from recently discovered lung cancer.
Lavin was working on the Hulu comedy Mid-Century Modern at the time of her death.
“Working with Linda was one of the highlights of our careers,” show-runners David Kohan, Max Mutchnick and Jimmy Burrows said in a statement.
“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.”
A native of Maine, Lavin moved to New York after majoring in theater arts at the College of William & Mary. She went on to appear in an off-Broadway revival of George and Ira Gershwin’s Oh, Kay!.
Over the course of her career, she earned six Tony nominations, the first of which came for her portrayal of Elaine in 1970’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers. Lavin won the award in 1987 for playing Kate in Broadway Bound.
Lavin also made a name for herself in TV, landing a recurring role as Detective Janice Wentworth in the first two seasons of ABC‘s Barney Miller. She was later cast to lead Alice in 1976, which made her a household name.
The show, based on the 1974 movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, saw Lavin as a financially-strained, widowed mother in Phoenix working in a diner. She earned one Emmy nomination and two Golden Globes for her work on the hit show.
Speaking to broadcaster Steve Adubato in 2012, Lavin discussed how the role thrust her into the women’s movement at the time.
“I knew it behooved me to learn about single mothers and working women,” she said. “So I went to Gloria Steinem, whom I had met briefly, and she hooked me up with writers and columnists and news people who were writing about working women.
“I learned that Alice represented 80 percent of all the women who work in this country who were still struggling at 69 cents to the dollar that men were making for the same quality of work. Suddenly, I had a rhetoric, I had a commitment.”
Lavin’s storied career also saw her take on big screen roles in a number of movies, including 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan, See You in the Morning (1989), I Want to Go Home (1989), Wanderlust (2012), and The Intern (2015).
In recent years, she appeared in How to Be a Latin Lover (2017), Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019), and Being the Ricardos (2021) opposite Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem.
On TV, Lavin was mostly recently seen in the CBS shows B Positive and Elsbeth, as well as No Good Deed, a new Netflix comedy featuring Lisa Kudrow. Lavin attended the show’s Hollywood premiere on December 4.
Lavin is survived by her husband, the drummer and artist Steve Bakunas, who she married in 2005.