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Vale: Katherine Helmond

US actress, best known for Who's the Boss?, Soap & Everybody Loves Raymond, has died.

US actress Katherine Helmond, best known for Who’s the Boss? Soap Everybody Loves Raymond, has died aged 89.

She died a week ago at her home in Los Angeles, from complications with Alzheimer’s disease.

Helmond’s credits date back to the 1950s but her real fame didn’t start arriving until she was nearly
50.

Her major break came with Soap, a parody of soap operas that aired from 1977 to 1981.

She played wealthy matriarch Jessica Tate, one of two main characters on the show, which co-starred Robert Guillaume and was also a breakthrough for Billy Crystal, who played her nephew. She was nominated for Emmys for all four seasons of the show and won a best actress in a comedy Golden Globe in 1981.

She was best known for playing Mona Robinson, Judith Light’s mother, on Who’s the Boss?, which also starred Tony Danza and a young Alyssa Milano. It ran from 1984 – 1992.

She had a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 to 2004 as the title character’s mother-in-law.

Other credits included The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Providence, Benson, Charmed Lives, Girls on Top, Grass Roots, Coach and True Blood.

“My beautiful, kind, funny, gracious, compassionate, rock,” Milano mourned on Twitter.

“You were an instrumental part of my life. You taught me to hold my head above the marsh! You taught me to do anything for a laugh! What an example you were!”

“She taught me so much about life and inspired me indelibly by watching her work. Katherine was a gift to our business and to the world,” Judith Light said in a statement.

Source: Yahoo.

4 Responses

  1. Katherine Helmond was a unique actress – you never forgot who she was, with a distinctive face and voice, and a huge talent for varied roles. A career that enriched the world.

  2. This is so sad, and yet the discovery of this news still ellicited a warm smile as I think of all the joy this talented lady has brought, certainly to this viewer. Her ‘Jessica Tate was a classic and she was the heart of ‘Soap’. Being on a hit show across many decades is no small achievement. Katharine Helmond will be sorely missed. I’ll now have to extricate my Soap box set and get caught up in that wonderful world Susan Harris created.

  3. While I first remember seeing Katherine in Soap it was her role as Ida in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil in 1985 that made me adore her. Of course in Time Bandits as Mrs Ogre she was wonderful as well and to a new generation she will forever be known as Lizzie the Model T from Cars.

    Vale Katherine and thanks for keeping me entertained all these years from a 16 year old in 1977 to now.

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