Estelle Getty (pictured far left), the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic Sophia on TV's
The Golden Girls, has died. She was 84.
Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30am Tuesday at her Hollywood Boulevard home, said her son, Carl Gettleman.
"She was loved throughout the world in six continents, and if they loved sitcoms in Antarctica she would have been loved on seven continents," her son said. "She was one of the most talented comedic actresses who ever lived."
The Golden Girls, featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.
When she auditioned, Getty was appearing on stage in Hollywood as the carping Jewish mother in Harvey Fierstein's play
Torch Song Trilogy. In her early 60s, she flunked her
Golden Girls test twice because it was believed she didn't look old enough to play 80.
"I could understand that," she told an interviewer a year after the show debuted. "I walk fast, I move fast, I talk fast."
She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, "To you this is just a job. To me it's my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80." The artist did, Getty got the job and won two Emmys.
After her success in
The Golden Girls, other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in
Mask, Sylvester Stallone's in
Stop or My Mom Will Shoot and Barry Manilow's in the TV film
Copacabana. Other credits included
Mannequin and
Stuart Little (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).
Here's a clip of her work on The Golden Girls: