Linda Lavin
Linda Lavin is an actor, born 1937.
For most of a decade, Linda Lavin ran a diner on American television. Alice gave her the title role from 1976 to 1985 and made her one of the most familiar faces on the networks, but the sitcom sits in the middle of a career that began and ended on stage. She acted as a child, joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s, was noticed on Broadway through the 1960s, and had her first Tony nomination in 1970 before Hollywood took an interest in 1973. Recurring work on Barney Miller came first; the diner came after.
She won a Tony, two Golden Globes, three Drama Desk Awards and two Obie Awards over that career, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010. From 1987 she was back on Broadway regularly, in Broadway Bound, Gypsy, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Collected Stories.
What she did on screen, especially late, was play mothers and grandmothers who are nobody's idea of soft. The register is exact: total warmth, delivered with a small barb attached, so that the affection and the insult arrive in the same sentence. See Patty in The Intern, Nana in The Back-Up Plan, Millicent in How to Be a Latin Lover, Shari in Wanderlust, the older Madelyn Pugh in Being the Ricardos. She worked to the end, taking series regular roles in No Good Deed and Mid-Century Modern. She died in 2024.
Movies (14)
- The Intern (2015)
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2022)
- The Back-Up Plan (2010)
- Wanderlust (2012)
- How to Be a Latin Lover (2017)
- Naked Singularity (2021)
- Manhattan Night (2016)
- The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
- Being the Ricardos (2021)
- Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (2019)
- See You in the Morning (1989)
- The Ring (1996)
- The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays (2006)
- Bakery in Brooklyn (2016)
TV (13)
Where to start with Linda Lavin
The sitcom is the obvious call, and Alice holds up better than most of its decade, largely because Lavin refuses to play the character as a victim of her circumstances. The theme song promised a new life; the show mostly delivered shifts, and she made that funny.
For the film work, The Intern holds her single best late scene, an old friend delivering hard advice and not softening it, and Being the Ricardos uses her precisely because she can play a woman who wrote comedy for a living without ever mugging.
Barney Miller is the deep cut for people who want the pre-fame version. Room 104 is the strangest thing she ever did on television and worth hunting down. How to Be a Latin Lover and The Back-Up Plan are broad and disposable, and she is the best thing in both. Finish with No Good Deed, where the barb is entirely visible.