‘Alice’ Star & Tony Winner Linda Lavin Dies at 87

TV and film actress and Broadway performer Linda Lavin died unexpectedly in Los Angeles on Sunday, December 29, at the age of 87.  The star of CBS sitcom Alice, she had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, Deadline reported.

Lavin was working as recently as December 4, when she attended an event in Hollywood to promote her new Netflix series No Good Deed. She had also been filming her upcoming Hulu sitcom Mid-Century Modern alongside Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer and Nathan Lee Graham. The comedy had reportedly shot seven of its 10 episodes before the holidays and was due to start filming again early in the New Year. The show’s creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, along with director James Burrows paid tribute to Lavin:

“Working with Linda was one of the highlights of our careers,” they said, per 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.”

Linda Lavin attends the premiere of Netflix’s “No Good Deed” on December 04, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Lavin guest-starred on Barney Miller before getting her own TV series Alice, in which she played the lead role of a waitress and widowed mom Alice Hyatt, who had a 12-year-old son and worked at a roadside diner near Phoenix, Arizona.  The show, which ran from 1976 to 1985, turned “Kiss my grits” into a catchphrase. It also featured Lavin singing the theme song “There’s a New Girl in Town.” The hit comedy was based on the Martin Scorsese-directed movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which won an Oscar for its lead Ellen Burstyn.

ALICE, Linda Lavin, TV GUIDE cover, October 23-29, 1976. TV Guide/ Everett Collection

Her other TV roles included Room for Two, Sean Saves the World, plus appearances in The Sopranos, The Good Wife, Bones and The O.C. More recently she guest-starred in Elsbeth and appeared in B Positive.

Her movie roles included Damn Yankees, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Back-up Plan and The Intern.

Lavin, who was born in Portland, Maine in 1937. Both sets of her grandparents had emigrated from Russia.  She acted in High School before going to William and Mary College in Virginia. She began her hugely-successful Broadway career in the 1960s and earned the first of her six Tony nominees for Last of the Red-Hot Lovers in 1970, before winning a Tony in 1987 for Broadway Bound.

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She married actor Ron Leibman in 1969, but they divorced in 1981. Her second marriage to Kip Niven, who she met on the set of Alice, ended in 1992 after 10 years. In their divorce proceedings she accused Niven of mental and emotional cruelty, adultery and “profligate spending” of her income.  While Lavin had no biological children, she was stepmother to Niven’s two kids, and also to the children of her third husband, artist/musician Steve Bakunas, who she wed in 2005.