Mary Tyler Moore, who became a trailblazer, TV icon and Oscar nominee, has died at the age of 80.
Moore was born in Brooklyn in 1936, but moved with her family to Los Angeles when she was eight. She decided at the age of 17 that she would become a dancer, and won a job as a dancing elf for a series of Hotpoint adverts in the 1950s; working on 39 of them in five days. After becoming pregnant, she switched to modeling, appearing anonymously on record covers before landing her first TV role as a mysterious receptionist on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, where only her legs were seen but her voice was heard. She went on to a number of guest appearances on different shows and graduated to bigger parts in movies and TV series. including Thoroughly Modern Mille, Ordinary People (which earned her the Oscar nomination as Best Actress), Six Weeks and David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster in 1996.
Yet it was on the small screen where she would truly become a legend, becoming a groundbreaking actress, producer and someone who transformed the image of women on television thanks to roles in shows such as in The Dick Van Dyke Show, which led to an Emmy for her portrayal of Laurie Petrie and huge fame. “She was grace personified. She could never take a wrong step,” Carl Reiner, who cast her in the series, told Variety. “The fact that she started out as a dancer was indicative of everything she did after that. Her grace was unmistakable. I saw it the first time she walked into my office.” She parlayed that success into her own sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a newsroom sitcom that ran for seven years, winning more awards. She never quite managed to hit the same level of success again, but remained an influence on generations to come, producing other series and popping up on various shows, while also acting on stage.
“Today, beloved icon, Mary Tyler Moore, passed away at the age of 80 in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine,” says the statement from Mara Buxbaum, her longtime representative. “A passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile.”