Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark sitcom Alice, has died at 87.

Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actor, became a working class icon as a paper hat-wearing waitress on a television sitcom. Alicedied. He was 87 years old.

Lavin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from recently diagnosed lung cancer, his representative, Bill Velorick, told The Associated Press in an email.

After success on Broadway, Lavin tried his luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. He has been tapped to star in a new CBS sitcom based on it Alice Doesn’t Live Here AnymoreDirected by Martin Scorsese, Ellen Burstyn won an Oscar for her role as a waitress.

The title has been shortened Alice and Lavin became a role model for working mothers like Alice Hyatt, a widow with a 12-year-old son who works at a roadside diner near Phoenix. The show where Lavigne sings the theme song There’s a New Girl in TownHe worked in 1976-1985.

The show made the song “Kiss my grits” a catchphrase and starred Polly Holliday as Flo the waitress and Vic Tayback as the grumpy owner and head chef of Mel’s Diner. The series was featured on the CBS schedule for its first two seasons, but was a hit All in the Family Sunday nights in October 1977. It was among the top 10 primetime series for four of the next five seasons. Variety magazine named it one of the best workplace comedies of all time.

Lavigne soon won a Tony for best actress in a play for Neil Simon Broadway Bound It also won the Drama Desk, Foreign Critics and Helen Hayes awards in 1987.

“He was a great performer with a generous heart,” Actors’ Equity said at X. In 2023, the band honored him with the Richard Seff Award for Veteran Supporting Actor for his work in Noah Diaz’s film. You will get sick.

He was working to promote a new Netflix series that appeared this month. There is no good deedand the filming of the upcoming Hulu series, Medieval modern, As per the deadlinewho first reported his death. He also appeared as a guest star in 2024 Elizabethspinoff Good Wife.

Lavin grew up in Portland, Maine and moved to New York after graduating from the College of William and Mary. He sang in night clubs and show ensembles.

Iconic producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavigne her first big break when she directed a Broadway musical It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman. He went on to earn a Tony nomination for Simon’s The last of the red hot lovers Before winning for another Simon game 18 years later in 1969, Broadway Bound.

In the mid-1970s, Lavin moved to Los Angeles. He had a recurring role Barney Miller and in 1976 was cast in a new CBS sitcom based on Ellen Burstyn’s Oscar-winning waitress comedy-drama. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

Returning to Broadway, Lavigne then starred in a Paul Rudnick comedy New Agethere was a concert program called Songs and Confessions of a One-Time Waiter and earned a Tony nomination in Donald Margulies. Collected Stories.

“A star in every medium, but a pure theater genius. Happily funny, deeply emotional and audiences adored him. He never disappointed: I worked with him and just watching him rehearse and put on a show was an education and the greatest joy” Rudnik X wrote in

AP’s Michael Kuchwara sympathized with Lavigne Collected Storieswrites that she “gives one of the full, nuanced performances that captures the woman’s intellectual strength, her wry sense of humor, and her growing physical vulnerability with stunning fidelity. Lavigne’s sense of timing, whether she’s joking or acerbically tearing her apart, is the work of her protégé.”

Lavin returned to the spotlight in his 70s and earned a Tony nomination for Nicky Silver’s. Lions. He also acted Other desert cities and revival Fools Before moving to Broadway.

AP raved about Lavin again Lionscalled her “an absolute wonder to see as Rita Lyons, a collection of firm convictions and a brooding mother’s coquettishness, both suffocating and alienating matriarch.”

He also acted in the film Travel with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd and released her first CD, Opportunities. She played Jennifer Lopez’s grandmother Backup Plan.

When asked for guidance from up-and-coming actors, Lavin emphasized one thing. He told the AP in 2011: “I’m saying that what happened to me was that work begets work. As long as it doesn’t bring moral condemnation to me, I did it.”

She and her artist, musician and third husband Steve Bakunas converted an old car garage into the 50-seat Red Barn Studio Theater in Wilmington, North Carolina. It was opened in 2007 and includes their production Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, The rabbit hole David Lindsay-Abaire and The tale of the allergist’s wife Lavin also earned a Tony nomination for Charles Busch, which he starred on Broadway.

He returned to television in 2013 Sean saves the worldstarring Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes, a show that lasted one season. Lavin also spoke mother and 9JKL.