Linda Lavin (October 15, 1937 – December 29, 2024) was an American actress and singer.

Known for her roles on stage and screen, she received several awards including three Drama Desk Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Obie Awards, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for a Daytime Emmy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010.

After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s. She made her television debut in Rhoda and had a recurring role in Barney Miller (1975–1976). She gained notoriety for playing the title role of a waitress at a roadside diner in the CBS sitcom Alice (1976–1985), a role for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and won two consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy. She later starred in NBC's sitcom Sean Saves the World and the CBS sitcom 9JKL and took recurring roles in the legal drama The Good Wife (2014–2015) and the sitcom B Positive (2020–2022).

On stage, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play playing a strong-willed mother in the Neil Simon play Broadway Bound (1987). She was Tony-nominated for her roles in Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1970), The Diary of Anne Frank (1998), The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2001), Collected Stories (2010), and The Lyons (2012). She is also known for acting in It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman (1966), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1967), Gypsy (1990), The Sisters Rosensweig (1993), and Follies (2011). She made her film debut in Damn Yankees! (1967) and later had roles in The Morning After (1974), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), I Want to Go Home (1989), and Being the Ricardos (2021).

Early life and career

Lavin was born in Portland, Maine, the daughter of David Joseph Lavin, a businessman, and Lucille (née Potter), an opera singer. The Lavin family were active members of the local Jewish community. Both sets of grandparents, Simon and Jessie Lavin and Harry and Esther Potter, emigrated from Russia. Her family was musically talented, and Lavin was on stage from the age of five. She studied acting at HB Studio in New York City. She attended Waynflete School before enrolling in the College of William & Mary. While at William and Mary, she performed with the William and Mary Theater in many productions directed by long-time Professor Howard Scammon. In the summer of 1958, she played one of the leads in The Common Glory, an outdoor drama written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Paul Green and staged at an amphitheater on campus. Upon her graduation from William and Mary, she had already received her Actors' Equity Association card. She was a member of the Compass Players in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, Lavin had appeared in several Broadway shows and appeared on the 1966 cast recordings of The Mad Show performing Stephen Sondheim's "The Boy From...". From It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, one of her numbers, "You've Got Possibilities", was the album's best-received song and was called "The one memorable song...flirty, syncopated" by the Dallas Observer.

Career

Television and film

In 1967, Lavin made an appearance as Gloria Thorpe in a television version of the baseball musical Damn Yankees with Phil Silvers. 

In 1969, Lavin married actor Ron Leibman, and by 1973, the couple had arrived in Hollywood, California. After various guest appearances on episodic television series such as The Nurses, Rhoda, Harry O, and Kaz, Lavin landed a recurring role as Detective Janice Wentworth on Barney Miller during the first and second seasons (1975–1976).

She left Barney Miller to star in the lead role in Alice, which was a sitcom success that ran from 1976 to 1985 thru the CBS network. The series was based on the Martin Scorsese–directed Ellen Burstyn film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Lavin portrayed Alice Hyatt, a waitress and singer, the character that Burstyn had played. Lavin performed the series' theme song, "There's a New Girl in Town," which was written by David Shire and Alan and Marilyn Bergman and was updated for each of the first six seasons. During the series' nine-season run, Lavin earned two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and gained experience directing, especially during the later seasons. Lavin also played a dual role in Alice, as Debbie Walden, the wizened and former landlady of the character Vera Louise Gorman-Novak. Lavin also made numerous television appearances outside of Alice, including hosting her own holiday special for CBS, Linda in Wonderland (1980). She acted in two sitcoms, Room for Two (1992–93) and 1998's Conrad Bloom. In Room for Two, she played a mother who moved in with her daughter, played by Patricia Heaton, who has a show on a local television station. The daughter gives Lavin's character her own segment, called "Just a Thought", at the end of her program.

She made numerous television guest appearances, including roles on The Muppet Show (1979), Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The O.C., Touched by an Angel (1999), and HBO's The Sopranos (2002).

She also appeared in many telefilms between 1967 and 1998, including: Damn Yankees!, Sadbird, The Morning After, Jerry, Like Mom, Like Me, The $5.20 an Hour Dream, Another Woman's Child, Maricela, Lena: My 100 Children, Whitewash, A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story, Stolen Memories: Secrets from the Rose Garden, For the Future: The Irvine Fertility Scandal, The Ring, and Best Friends for Life. Lavin produced and starred in A Matter of Life and Death, the 1981 telefilm based on the work of nurse thanatologist Joy Ufema. She directed the 1990 telefilm Flour Babies.

Lavin made her feature film debut in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). Her other feature film appearances include See You in the Morning, starring Jeff Bridges; Alain Resnais's I Want to Go Home, opposite Gérard Depardieu (both 1989); and The Back-up Plan (2010).

Lavin also provided the voice of the Mother Vulture in the animated series Courage the Cowardly Dog for the episode "Watch The Birdies".

After working in theater for many years, Lavin was cast in the NBC television sitcom Sean Saves the World (2013–14) playing Sean Hayes' pushy, meddling mother Lorna. The Los Angeles Times interviewer noted: "A highlight of the show is the wonderful chemistry between Lavin and Hayes, who exchange repartee and quips with breezy ease. And the cast seems smitten with her."

In 2015, Lavin guest starred as a judge approached to stop an execution in the episode of Bones titled "The Verdict in the Victims." Actress Emily Deschanel said "Lavin was particularly fun to have on" the show.

Lavin played Judy Roberts in the CBS sitcom 9JKL (2017–18) alongside Mark Feuerstein and Elliott Gould. Lavin caught up with Portland Magazine in its Winterguide 2018 issue about her return to CBS stating:

Like Alice, 9JKL deals with family relationships–except it's a more sophisticated and edgier show. The people are more privileged and on a higher economic level than Alice. I love to go to work every day. I feel very grateful and fortunate for this role, the quality of work and good people at this stage of my life. Fun and creative are the operative words for me. I'm very committed to participating in projects where I can bring and exchange those qualities with like-minded people.

In 2019, Lavin joined the cast of the Netflix comedy/horror Santa Clarita Diet, starring Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant.

In 2020, Lavin performed the song "The Boy From..." from The Mad Show in Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration. Lavin appeared in the CBS comedy B Positive, which aired from 2020 to 2022, in a recurring role as Norma, one of the senior citizens at a local retirement home.

In June 2024, it was announced that Max Mutchnick and David Kohan had created a Golden Girls–like TV series with Matt Bomer cast as Betty White's character and Nathan Lane as Bea Arthur's character. Lavin was set to play Lane's mother. The series has been picked up by Hulu streaming network and is set in Palm Springs with the working title Mid-Century Modern.

Personal life

Lavin was married three times. Her first marriage to Ron Leibman ended in divorce in 1981. Her second marriage, to Kip Niven, whom she met on the set of Alice, ended in a bitter divorce in 1992. While Lavin had no biological children, she was the stepmother of Jim and Kate Niven, the children of her second husband and played an active role in their lives and also in the lives of her grandchildren, Grayson, Talen, Toby, Zeke, Scout, Riley, and Wyatt. She was also the great-grandmother of Zion. She then married the love of her life, Steve Bakunas. The couple resided in Wilmington, North Carolina, where they were committed community members who were working together to rehabilitate impoverished neighborhoods including renovating many homes, donating a park to the city and creating a community theater, the Red Barn Studio. In 1997, Lavin founded The Linda Lavin Arts Foundation in Wilmington, "to promote and foster the advancement of the performing and visual arts, with special emphasis on arts in education. Her foundation has created a theater program called Girl Friends, whose purpose is to raise the self-esteem of at-risk teenage girls of the inner city."

Both of her former husbands, Niven and Leibman, died in 2019, as did Alice co-stars Philip McKeon and Charles Levin.

In Wilmington, she was a stage director. One of her directorial credits was a 1998 production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It, updated to a Brazilian jazz style. In both Wilmington and New York she taught master classes in acting and singing.

In September 2012, Lavin announced that she intended to sell her home in Wilmington and return to New York City. Lavin and Bakunas lived in New York City from circa 2013–2014 on. 

In July 2016, the Luxury Living website posted Lavin's Central Park South apartment for sale at $1.25 million.

Death

Lavin died in Los Angeles of complications from lung cancer on December 29, 2024, at the age of 87.