Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning stage performer who became a working-class icon as a paper-hat-wearing waitress on the TV sitcom Alice, has died. She was 87 years old.

Lavin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from recently discovered lung cancer, his representative Bill Veloric said The Associated Press In an email.

After being successful on Broadway, Lavin tried his luck in Hollywood in the mid-1970s. She was cast in a new CBS sitcom based on Alice Don’t Live Here Anymore, the film directed by Martin Scorsese that won Ellen Burstyn an Oscar for playing the waitress.

The title was shortened to Alice, and Lavin became a role model for working mothers as Alice Hyatt, a widowed mother and her 12-year-old son working at a roadside stand outside Phoenix. The show, in which Lavigne sang the theme song, There’s a New Girl in Town, ran from 1976 to 1985.

The show turned ‘Kiss my grits’ into a catchphrase and Polly Holliday played waitress Flo and Vic Tayback played the grumpy owner and head chef of Mel’s Diner.

The series moved around the CBS schedule during its first two seasons, but became the Sunday night hit All in the Family in October 1977. It was among the top 10 series of primetime in four of the next five seasons. Diversity The magazine listed it among the best workplace comedies of all time.

Lavin soon won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound in 1987.

She was recently this month promoting a new Netflix series, in which she appears in No Good Deed, and filming the upcoming Hulu series, Mid-Century Modern. deadlineWho first reported his death.

Lavin grew up in Portland, Maine, and moved to New York City after graduating from the College of William and Mary. She sang in groups at night clubs and shows.

Celebrated producer and director Hal Prince gave Lavin his first big break, directing the Broadway musical It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. He earned a Tony nomination in Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers in 1969 and won 18 years later for another of Simon’s plays, Broadway Bound.

In the mid-1970s, Lavin moved to Los Angeles. 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 Don’t Live Here Anymore.

Back on Broadway, Lavin later starred in Paul Rudnick’s comedy The New Century, had a concert show called Songs and Confessions of a One-Time Waitress, and earned a Tony nomination in The Collected Stories of Donald Margulies.

“A star in every medium, but a complete dramatic genius. Extremely funny, extremely emotional, and audiences adored him. He never disappointed: I worked with him, and watching him rehearse and perform was an education and the most There was great joy.” Rudnick wrote on X.

K Michael Kuchwara AP Collected Stories praised Lavin, writing that she “gives one of those perfect, subtle performances which captures the woman’s intellectual strength, her sense of humor, and her growing physical frailty with astonishing fidelity. And Lavin’s The understanding is superb, whether telling a joke or providing sharp criticism of your pupil’s work.”

Lavin gained renewed attention in the ’70s and earned a Tony nomination for Nikki Silver’s The Lyons. He also starred in revivals of Other Desert Cities and Follies before transferring to Broadway.

AP The Lyons again praised Lavin, calling her “a complete surprise to watch as Rita Lyons, a motherly impostor with a collection of convictions and eye rolls, a matriarch who is both suffocating and “Gonna keep everyone at arm’s length.”

She also appeared in the film Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd and released her debut CD, Possibilities. She played Jennifer Lopez’s grandmother in The Back-Up Plan.

When asked for guidance from up-and-coming actors, Lavin emphasized one thing. She said, “I say what happened for me was that work brings work. As long as it was not morally reprehensible to me, I did it.” AP in 2011.

She and Steve Bacunas, an artist, musician and her third husband, converted an old automotive garage in Wilmington, North Carolina, into the 50-seat Red Barn Studio Theatre.

It opened in 2007 and its productions include John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole and Charles Bush’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, in which Lavin also starred on Broadway And earned a Tony. Enrollment.

She returned to TV in 2013 with Sean Saves the World, starring Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes, the show ran for one season. Lavigne also performed on Mom and 9JKL.