Linda Lavin

Linda Lavin (October 15, 1937 – December 29, 2024) was an American actress and singer born in Portland, Maine, the younger daughter of David Joseph Lavin, a businessman, and Lucille Dorothy (née Potter), an opera singer. Both sets of her grandparents had emigrated from Russia, and the Lavin family were active members of Portland's Jewish community. Music and performance were central to her upbringing; Lavin was on stage from the age of five. She attended Waynflete School and Deering High School before enrolling at the College of William & Mary, where in the summer of 1958 she played one of the leads in The Common Glory, an outdoor drama by Paul Green. She had already received her Actors' Equity Association card by the time she graduated. She subsequently studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Lavin's professional stage work began in the late 1950s, when she joined the Compass Players. In 1960 she appeared at the East 74th Street Theater in George Gershwin's Oh, Kay!, alongside Penny Fuller and Marti Stevens. Her Broadway career began in 1962 with the musical A Family Affair, followed by The Riot Act in 1963 and Carl Reiner's Something Different in 1967. During this period she was also active Off-Broadway, appearing in the revue Wet Paint in 1965, for which she won the Theatre World Award, and in the musical The Mad Show in 1966, where she introduced the cabaret standard "The Boy From...," written by Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers. Her performance in Little Murders in 1969 earned her a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. That same year she appeared in John Guare's two one-act plays Cop-Out, prompting New York Times critic Clive Barnes to note that she "carries versatility almost to the point of paranoia."

Her featured role in the 1966 Broadway musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman marked a significant step in her stage career. She went on to appear in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever in 1967. Her first Tony Award nomination came in 1970 for her role as Elaine in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers, a performance Barnes described in the Times as "beautiful," citing her physical expressiveness and vocal precision. Her final Broadway credit before departing for Hollywood was Paul Sills' Story Theatre in 1971. In 1975, during her time away from Broadway, she appeared in the Shakespeare in the Park production of The Comedy of Errors at the Delacorte Theater, and in 1984 she played the character of "The Mother" in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, directed by Robert Brustein.

After more than a decade away from Broadway, Lavin returned in 1987 to play Kate in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, a performance that earned her both the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. Theater critic Charles McNulty later described the performance as widely considered one of the most memorable in contemporary Broadway history, and critic Gordon Rogoff called it "one of those textbook lessons in great acting." In July 1990, Lavin stepped into the role of Mama Rose Hovick in Gypsy on Broadway, replacing Tyne Daly. June Havoc, whose mother was the real Rose Hovick, sent Lavin a photograph of Rose with a note of appreciation for the portrayal.

Lavin's subsequent Broadway work continued at a steady pace through the 1990s and 2000s. She joined The Sisters Rosensweig as a replacement Gorgeous Teitelbaum beginning in September 1993. She earned a Tony nomination for Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Mrs. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank from 1997 to 1998, a production in which Natalie Portman appeared opposite her. In 1995, Off-Broadway, she performed in Death-Defying Acts, a program of three one-act plays, appearing in the Elaine May and Woody Allen pieces; that work brought her an Obie Award for Performance, a Lucille Lortel Award, and a Drama Desk Award nomination. She played Marjorie in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife from 2000 to 2001, co-starring Tony Roberts and Michele Lee, receiving both a Tony nomination for Leading Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination. In 2002 she appeared in Hollywood Arms in Chicago and on Broadway, playing the nanny to a young Carol Burnett.

In 2010, Lavin appeared on Broadway as Ruth Steiner in a revival of Collected Stories opposite Sarah Paulson, later reprising the role for a PBS production and receiving her fifth Tony nomination. She appeared in Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center beginning in December 2010. In 2011 she was featured in the Kennedy Center production of the musical Follies as Hattie Walker. That same year she originated the role of Rita in Nicky Silver's The Lyons at the Off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre, then reprised it when the production transferred to Broadway's Cort Theatre, opening April 23, 2012, and closing July 1, 2012, earning her a sixth Tony nomination. Her Broadway career spanned from 1962 to 2016. Over the course of her stage work she accumulated a Tony Award, three Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.

Beyond the stage, Lavin built a substantial screen career. She made her television debut in Rhoda and held a recurring role in Barney Miller from 1975 to 1976. She gained widespread recognition playing the title role in the CBS sitcom Alice from 1976 to 1985, a waitress at a roadside diner, a performance for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and won two consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy. She later starred in NBC's Sean Saves the World and the CBS sitcom 9JKL, and took recurring roles in the legal drama The Good Wife from 2014 to 2015 and the sitcom B Positive from 2020 to 2022. Her film debut came in The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984, followed by roles in I Want to Go Home and See You in the Morning, both in 1989, and Being the Ricardos in 2021. Across her career she received three Drama Desk Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Obie Awards, a Tony Award, and nominations for both a Daytime Emmy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.