An iconic sitcom star from the 1970s was unrecognizable when she surfaced in Los Angeles this week at the age of 86.
Born in Maine, she initially pursued a successful career on Broadway before striking out to Hollywood to make it on television.
She became a small screen sensation on the TV comedy Alice, which was based on the Martin Scorsese film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
Once the show was over, she returned to the New York stage, winning a Tony Award for the beloved Neil Simon play Broadway Bound.
When she stepped out in California this week, she cut a spry and sprightly figure, wearing a stylish floral blouse with trousers that featured high slits.
Who is she?
An iconic sitcom star from the 1970s was unrecognizable when she surfaced in Los Angeles this week at the age of 86
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She is Linda Lavin, who played the title character on the smash hit CBS sitcom Alice for nine seasons from 1976 until 1985.
The television program was an adaptation of the 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, directed by Martin Scorsese.
Ellen Burstyn starred in the movie as a new widow with a young son who moves to Arizona and starts working at a diner.
She ultimately strikes up a romantic connection with one of the restaurant’s young patrons, played by rock star turned actor Kris Kristofferson.
Alice, the sitcom adaptation, ran more than 200 episodes, with Linda playing the title role amid a cast that included Philip McKeon as her son Tommy.
Born to a Russian Jewish family in Portland, Maine, Linda enjoyed the benefits of a musical background, as her mother was an opera singer.
She began her career on the New York stage, featuring in such Broadway shows It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman in 1968.
Her early gigs included The Mad Show, an off-Broadway revue inspired by Mad magazine, in which she sang Stephen Sondheim’s parody of the classic Antonio Carlos Jobim bossa nova number The Girl From Ipanema.
When she stepped out in California this week, she cut a spry and sprightly figure, wearing a stylish floral blouse with a youthful set of jeans
She is Linda Lavin, who played the title character on the smash hit CBS sitcom Alice for nine seasons from 1976 until 1985
Alice, the sitcom adaptation, ran more than 200 episodes, with Linda playing the title role amid a cast that included Philip McKeon as her son Tommy
By 1970 she had earned her first Tony nomination for Neil Simon’s Last Of The Red Hot Lovers, starring her with Doris Roberts and James Coco.
However she only achieved true nationwide stardom after she decamped to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s to act on the screen.
One of her early breakthrough roles on television was a recurring part as a detective on the first two seasons of the police sitcom Barney Miller in 1975 and 1976.
Then, in 1976, she landed the part that made her a household name, playing Alice on CBS for nine years and earning an Emmy nomination for the show in 1979.
After the series ended in 1986, she made her grand return to the Great White Way in Broadway Bound, the last play in a semi-autobiographical trilogy by Neil Simon.
Playing a character loosely based on the playwright’s own mother, Linda won the Tony Award for best lead actress in a play in 1987.
One of her early breakthrough roles on television was a recurring part as a detective on the first two seasons of the police sitcom Barney Miller in 1975 and 1976
In 1987, the year after Alice ended, Linda won a Tony Award for her role in Neil Simon’s play Broadway Bound, which she is pictured in with Jonathan Silverman
She also kept up the pace on television, guest-starring on such beloved programs as The Sopranos (pictured), The O.C., Bob’s Burgers and The Good Wife
She continued acting on Broadway, earning another Tony nod in 1998 for The Diary Of Anne Frank, which had the then 16-year-old Natalie Portman in the title role.
Linda also stepped in as a replacement for Madeline Kahn in The Sisters Rosensweig, the blockbuster play by the Broadway hitmaker Wendy Wasserstein.
She also kept up the pace on television, guest-starring on such beloved programs as The Sopranos, The O.C., Bob’s Burgers and The Good Wife.
Just this year she filmed a pilot called Mid-Century Modern, Ryan Murphy’s gay spin on The Golden Girls starring Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer.
In her personal life, she has been divorced twice – first from her fellow Broadway star Ron Leibman and then from her Alice castmate Kip Niven.
Since Valentine’s Day 2005, she has been happily married to Steve Bakunas, an actor 20 years her junior who has featured on such series as One Tree Hill.