Tony Award-winning actor Linda Lavin dies at 87

Linda Lavin, a Tony Award-winning stage actor who became a working-class icon as a paper-hat-wearing waitress on the TV sitcom Alice, has died. She had a recurring role on Barney Miller and in 1976 was chosen to star in a new CBS sitcom based on Ellen Burstyn's Oscar-winning waitress comedy-drama, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Back on Broadway, Lavin later starred in Paul Rudnick's comedy The New Century, had a concert show called Songs & Confessions of a One-Time Waitress and earned a Tony nomination in Donald Margulies' Collected Stories. pic.twitter.com/oI6OkkWgpK — Paul Rudnick December 30, 2024 Michael Kuchwara of the AP gave Lavin a rave in Collected Stories, writing that she "gives one of those complete, nuanced performances, capturing the woman's intellectual vigor, her wry sense of humor and her increasing physical frailty with astonishing fidelity. It opened in 2007 and its productions include Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire and The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by Charles Busch, in which Lavin also starred on Broadway, earning a Tony nomination.