‘It was like a dream’: Linda Lavin reflects on iconic roles in ‘Alice,’ ‘Broadway Bound,’ and more
In her final interview with Gold Derby just months before her death, the stage and screen star looked back at her storied career.
Linda Lavin, best known for playing the title role in Alice, died Dec. 29 at the age of 87 following a battle with lung cancer. Based on Martin Scorsese‘s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the CBS sitcom ran for nine seasons from 1976 to 1985. Lavin was nominated for an Emmy in 1979 and earned two Golden Globes for her role as the working single mother who makes ends meet as a waitress at a diner in Arizona.
In June, following a guest appearance on CBS’ Elsbeth, Lavin reflected on her long career on screen and stage to Gold Derby, describing Alice as “like a dream.”
“My life had fallen apart, my first marriage was falling apart, and I was starting a new job,” the actress recalled (watch the full interview above), noting how the show changed her life. She said her first Golden Globes ceremony was particularly special because “it was the film and television community all in one room, sitting at tables, eating, drinking, having a wonderful time. … I got to see famous people and sit at this table with a couple of people from the show and they called up my name.”
“It was like a dream,” she said of winning her first Globe that evening, a dream that she “never allowed [herself] to have, except as a child. … It’s a very vital dream, of course. You hope for the recognition, you hope for the validation, but boy, that moment was completely surprising and extremely thrilling for me to be seen and to be heard as an actor, as a human being.”
Before and after Alice, Lavin starred on Broadway in 17 productions over 50 years. She earned her first Tony Award nomination for Last of the Red Hot Lovers, a Neil Simon play in which she starred alongside James Coco, Doris Roberts, and Marcia Rodd. She won Best Actress in a Play on her next nomination for Simon’s Broadway Bound, starring as the mother of two young, budding comedy writers who must confront her husband’s infidelity.
She recalled that 1987 Tony ceremony in detail. “I remember how much I thought about it. I was nervous about it,” she said. Upon receiving the nomination, she invited her 94-year-old father to accompany her to the ceremony. “He got all dressed up and I had my best girlfriend be his date, because my mother had passed by then.”
She was presented the Tony by the iconic duo of Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, which made it all the richer because she vividly remembered seeing the pair in a summer stock production of The Fourposter in Maine when she was a child.
A Broadway baby through-and-through, Lavin said winning a Tony was “visceral” and “emotional.” “To have found my path, my calling, my talent, my passion for a life’s work, a purposeful life, and to be recognized for it, at that moment it means everything. Then you go back to work.”
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In April, Lavin appeared in the second episode of Elsbeth as a sharp-tongued co-op president killed by an ambitious real-estate agent. The performer signed onto the show in part because she had appeared in three episodes of Robert and Michelle King‘s The Good Wife in 2014 and 2015, for which Lavin earned her sole Critics Choice Television Award nomination for Drama Guest Performer. “I love the Kings, I had done a few episodes of The Good Wife for them and with them and they’re wonderful people to work with. Robert was directing this episode [of Elsbeth]. It was a chance to work with Carrie [Preston] … and Jane Krakowski.”
Earlier this month, Lavin appeared in three episodes of the new Netflix series No Good Deed as a hilariously nosy neighbor with detailed theories on the crimes committed in her neighborhood, working alongside Lisa Kudrow, Ray Romano, Linda Cardellini, Abbi Jacobson, and O-T Fagbenle. Lavin nearly wrapped production on the forthcoming Hulu series Mid-Century Modern, also starring Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham, and has one upcoming film, One Big Happy Family, slated for release in 2025.
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