Tony Award-winning actress Linda Lavin who played the title role in the TV sitcom “Alice” has died in Los Angeles, according to media reports. She was 87.
Lavin died Sunday of complications from lung cancer, her representative Bill Veloric, told the Associated Press in an email.
Lavin, who was a successful Broadway stage actress, played a waitress named Alice in the CBS sitcom based on “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” directed by Martin Scorsese and a film that won actress Ellen Burstyn an Academy Award.
The TV show’s title was shortened to “Alice,” starring Lavin as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother with a 12-year-old son who worked at a roadside diner outside of Phoenix. It ran from 1976 to 1985. Lavin sang the show’s theme song, “There’s a New Girl in Town.”
“Alice” also starred Polly Holliday and Vic Tayback, who worked at Mel’s Diner.
Lavin won a Tony Award for best actress in a play for Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” in 1987.
She was promoting a new Netflix series this month in which she appears, “No Good Deed,” and filming a forthcoming Hulu series, “Mid-Century Modern,” according to Deadline, which first reported her death.
Lavin moved to New York City from Portland, Maine after graduating from the College of William and Mary. In New York, she sang in nightclubs and in show ensembles.