Emmy-winning actress Mary Tyler Moore, who brightened television screens as the perky suburban housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show and then as a fledgling feminist on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died at the age of 80, a representative said.
Moore died in the company of friends and her husband Dr S Robert Levine, representative Mara Buxbaum said in a statement.
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Mary Tyler Moore dead at 80
The iconic actress from The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show reportedly died in the company of friends and her husband, Dr S Robert Levine. Vision: Channel Seven.
"A groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile," Buxbaum's statement said.
According to reports, the actress had been taken to hospital following complications from Type 1 Diabetes, which she'd battled since she was 33. Her death was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest after she had contracted pneumonia, her family said.
![Actress Mary Tyler Moore has died at the age of 80.](/web/20170423160355im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/y/s/n/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtysn4.png/1485408563217.jpg)
A Hollywood veteran of over 50 years, Moore was best known for her delightful beret-tossing turn on the '70s hit sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a television staple in Australian households.
Created by James L Brooks and Allan Burns, it starred Moore as single 30-year-old Mary Richards, an independent and tough but vulnerable producer at a Milwaukee TV news room.
The role - groundbreaking for TV, in that it focused on an unapologetically non-married career woman - earned Moore three Emmys and a Golden Globe, while the series also picked up a Peabody Award in 1977 for its "sympathetic portrayal of a career woman in today's changing society".
Among its plotlines over its 7-season run were an episode where Richards demanded equal pay to her male co-workers, and another where she went on the pill.
mary tyler moore was the 1st woman on a sitcom to wear pants. sponsors were so mad, writers limited her to "one pants scene per episode." pic.twitter.com/3Lpvn3tUNc
— meddlesome as always (@nicolecieux) January 25, 2017
Long live the wit of #MaryTylerMoore. pic.twitter.com/Y54FlMX0ZS
— Telefeminism Project (@telefeminism) January 25, 2017
The show's feminist impact - long lauded by the likes of Tina Fey, who's said the series was the biggest influence on her own Emmy winner 30 Rock - continued behind-the-scenes.
Produced by Moore's own production company MTM Enterprises, the series was among the first to up the number of women in the writer's room. According to the 2013 book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic, by 1973, "23 out of 75 writers on the show were women, which was revolutionary at the time".
Moore was also nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in 1980's Ordinary People, the directorial debut of Robert Redford, where she played a mother struggling to cope with the death of a teenage son and her grieving family. The film was released just weeks before Moore's own son Richard died from an accidental gunshot wound, aged 24.
A regular on the stage, Moore also picked up a special Tony Award that same year for her work in a gender-flipped version of British writer Brian Clark's euthanasia play, Whose Life Is It Anyway?.
In recent years, she had made cameo appearances in sitcoms including That 70s Show and Hot In Cleveland, alongside her old Mary Tyler Moore Show castmate Betty White.
Celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen Fry and Ben Stiller, her co-star on David O. Russell's 1996 comedy Flirting With Disaster, were among those leading tributes to the late actress on Twitter today.
Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women. I send my love to her family.
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 25, 2017
Rehearsing on the #MaryTylerMoore stage today. A minute's silence as we remembered 1 of the true greats of TV comedy pic.twitter.com/UFHIkvWg3i
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) January 25, 2017
Thanks for the first real image of a woman being independent, funny & vulnerable. Thank you for changing the face of TV, #MaryTylerMoore! pic.twitter.com/3rZbPczSnF
— Viola Davis (@violadavis) January 25, 2017
#MaryTylerMoore it was my honor to have met you.. & working with you when you graced us on That '70s Show a memory I will carry forever #RIP
— Wilmer Valderrama (@WValderrama) January 25, 2017
Mary(MTM) was a gem. She was iconic, my boss, cast mate and a friend and I will miss her
— Michael Keaton (@MichaelKeaton) January 25, 2017
I loved Mary Tyler Moore on so many levels it was confusing. Such a huge part of our culture and consciousness. Sending love to her family.
— Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen) January 25, 2017
i never met mary tyler moore, but i loved her from afar - for her talent and, most importantly, for the trails she blazed for women.
— Harry Connick Jr (@HarryConnickJR) January 25, 2017
TV Icon and groundbreaker #MaryTylerMoore has passed. She broke through our TV screens and showed that a powerful woman can be funny. RIP. pic.twitter.com/eUY6SkP6Tr
— Marlee Matlin (@MarleeMatlin) January 25, 2017
- with Reuters