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Emmy-winning actor Mary Tyler Moore, who brightened American television screens as the perky suburban housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show and as a fledgling feminist on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, died on Wednesday at the age of 80, her representative said.
Moore, who won seven Emmy Awards for her television work, died in the company of friends and her husband, Dr S Robert Levine, representative Mara Buxbaum said in a statement.
Moore was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1981 film Ordinary People, in which she played a character very different from her TV roles - an icy woman coping with a suicide attempt by her 18-year-old son.
Moore’s eponymous show and The Dick Van Dyke Show were both among the most popular sitcoms of their time, with the former ranking seventh on TV Guide’s 2013 list of the best television shows.
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Moore emerged on US television in the early 1960s when many of the women in leading roles were traditional, apron-wearing stay-at-home moms, like June Cleaver on Leave It To Beaver.
Moore's bright-eyed Laura Petrie character on The Dick Van Dyke Show chipped away at that stereotype.
Laura wore stylish pants rather than house dresses and styled her hair like Jacqueline Kennedy.
Reuters