Kirstie Alley

Alley walked into a series that had been a hit for five years already and made it hers. Cheers began in 1982; she arrived in 1987 as Rebecca Howe and stayed to the end in 1993, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe in 1991 for a character who could have been a replacement and instead became a different show.

What she had was a rare comic mechanism: total composure, engineered to collapse. Rebecca was a professional woman with a plan, and the joke was always the exact moment the plan came apart, which Alley could time to the syllable. She could go from brittle to shameless inside one line and never lost the audience's sympathy on the way. That skill made her a genuine film draw for a decade. Look Who's Talking and its two sequels were enormous, Summer School and Sibling Rivalry and It Takes Two kept her in studio comedy, and Deconstructing Harry and Drop Dead Gorgeous showed how funny she was when a script let her be unpleasant. Before all of it she had played Lt. Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The later career was more turbulent and she was open about it. Veronica's Closet brought further Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, she won a second Emmy in the movie and miniseries category, and she took increasingly self-referential work, playing a version of herself in Fat Actress and competing on Dancing with the Stars. Scream Queens and Flaked gave her late character parts. She died in 2022.