Actress Kirstie Alley, best known for her role in the comedy series Cheers in the 1980s and 90s, has died of cancer at the age of 71.
“We are sad to inform you that our incredible, fierce and loving mother has passed away,” her children wrote. The family statement said that the cancer was “only recently discovered”.
“She was surrounded by her closest family and fought with great strength, leaving us with a certainty of her never-ending joy of living and whatever adventures lie ahead,” it continued. “As iconic as she was on screen, she was an even more amazing mother and grandmother.”
The family statement praised Kirstie Alley’s “zest and passion for life, her children, grandchildren and her many animals, not to mention her eternal joy of creating”.
John Travolta, who co-starred with her in the Look Who’s Talking series of movies, paid his respects on Instagram, saying: “Kirstie was one of the most special relationships I’ve ever had. I love you Kirstie,” he wrote alongside a photo of her. “I know we will see each other again.”
Alley’s last Instagram video was posted in September when she announced that was joining Cameo and fans could request “funny or sincere” messages from her using the platform. Her Cameo page has since been taken down.
Cheers
A native of Wichita, Kansas, Kirstie Alley attended Kansas State University but dropped out to become an interior decorator. She told Barbara Walters that she developed an addiction to cocaine before moving to Los Angeles and enrolling in Narconon, a rehabilitation program affiliated with the Church of Scientology.
When asked by Barbara Walters in 1992 why she had joined a religion with such a problematic past, Kirstie Alley said that she had “not come across anything” negative.
“It answered a lot of questions for me,” she said in 1997 of the church. “I was a pretty able person. I wasn’t looking for something like that. But I wanted to get rid of the barriers keeping me from what I wanted, to be an actress. It’s just part of my life.”
She won an Emmy award for her role as bar manager Rebecca Howe on the popular TV sitcom Cheers, appearing in 147 episodes after joining the show at the height of its popularity, replacing Shelley Long, and continuing to appear until its end in 1993. From 1997 to 2000, she starred in the sitcom Veronica’s Closet, earning additional Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
In 1993, she won a second Emmy for best lead actress, this time for a CBS TV movie called David’s Mother. She also appeared as a Vulcan in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and in the movies Drop Dead Gorgeous, Summer School and It Takes Two. In 2005 she chronicled her struggles with her weight playing a version of herself in the reality show Fat Actress.
In later years she adopted Scientology and became alienated from much of Hollywood society over her support of Donald Trump.
She competed on season 12 of Dancing with the Stars in 2011, and season 7 of The Masked Singer in 2022.
Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who worked with Alley in 2016 on episodes of TV’s Scream Queens, said on Facebook “She was a great comic foil in @tvscreamqueens and a beautiful mama bear in her very real life. She helped me buy onesies for my family that year for Christmas. We agreed to disagree about some things but had a mutual respect and connection. Sad news.”
Actor Josh Gad tweeted, “My heart breaks for Kirstie and her family. Whether it was her brilliance in Cheers; or her magnetic performance in the Look Who’s Talking franchise, her smile was always infectious, her laugh was always contagious and her charisma was always iconic. RIP.”
Funny
Kirstie Alley’s Cheers co-star Ted Danson said that he had just watched her in an episode of the show while on a plane before learning of her death. “I was on a plane today and did something I rarely do. I watched an old episode of Cheers,” Danson told Deadline. “It was the episode where Tom Berenger proposes to Kirstie, who keeps saying no, even though she desperately wants to say yes. Kirstie was truly brilliant in it. Her ability to play a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown was both moving and hysterically funny.”
Kirstie Alley was first married to Bob Alley, but the two eventually divorced, and a later marriage to Parker Stevenson also ended in divorce. She had two adopted children from her marriage to Parker Stevenson: William True Stevenson (born September 28, 1992) and Lillie Price Stevenson (born June 15, 1994).
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