Linda Lavin, the acclaimed Broadway star and Tony Award winner, died at the age of 87.
Lavin, known for her guest role on Barney Miller before starring in her own TV series Alice, died on Sunday, Dec. 29, PEOPLE has confirmed. Her representative stated she "passed unexpectedly due to complications from recently discovered lung cancer." The news was first reported by Deadline.
After returning to Broadway in the 1980s, Lavin earned a Tony Award in 1987 while continuing her work in television and film. Just weeks before her passing, she was promoting her new Netflix series No Good Deed and filming for the upcoming Hulu series Mid-Century Modern.
Born in Portland, Maine, in 1937, Lavin grew up in a family with deep ties to the local Jewish community. Her grandparents had emigrated from Russia, and her mother, a former singer, inspired her love for the theater.
"There's a picture of me at 1 1/2 — I use it at the end of my show — where I'm in my rompers, looking out at the world with wonder and joy and hope," Lavin told PEOPLE in 1992. "That's still me. I am still her."
Lavin began acting during high school and continued honing her craft while attending the College of William and Mary in Virginia. She later moved to New York City to pursue her dreams. "It took me 10 years to become established in New York," she told PEOPLE in 1978.
In 1966, Lavin starred in the Broadway musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, a production that became famous as a flop. Despite its lack of success, Lavin performed the show's most memorable song, "You've Got Possibilities." She first encountered the tune during her audition for the musical, as she recalled in a 2018 interview with BroadwayWorld.
"If you've seen that show and listened to that song, you know it's an impossible song to learn. It's got 87 verses, and it changes keys a million times," she said. The producers wanted a blonde, so she wore a wig to the audition. "By that time, I knew the song backwards and forwards, and they gave me the part right there and then," she recalled.
Lavin's early theater credits included Something Different (1967), Paul Sills' Story Theatre (1970), and Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969), the latter earning her a Tony nomination. In 1969, she married fellow actor Ron Leibman, and the couple relocated to Los Angeles in 1973.
On television, Lavin appeared in episodes of The Nurses, Rhoda, Harry O, and Kaz. She secured a recurring role as Detective Janice Wentworth on Barney Miller, featuring prominently in the show's first two seasons.
