Vale: Suzanne Somers

US actor Suzanne Somers, best known for Three’s Company and Step by Step, has died, aged 76.

She died on Sunday morning, one day short of her 77th birthday.

“Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years,” her longtime publicist R. Couri Hay wrote in a statement.

“Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family. Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th. Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”

Somers played Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company, based on the UK’s Man About the House, from 1977-1981 alongside John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt.

In 1980, Somers asked for a raise from $30,000 an episode to $150,000 an episode, equal to what Ritter was making. But ABC offered only a $5,000 hike, and Somers missed two episode tapings before the network fired her.

She later starred as Carol Foster Lambert on Step by Step from 1991-1998 opposite Patrick Duffy, and as Sheriff Hildy Granger in She’s the Sheriff (1987–1989).

Somers began her acting career in the late 1960s and early ’70s when she took on small, uncredited roles in Bullitt, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, Fools followed by a cameo in American Graffiti.

On Starsky and Hutch she played three different characters followed by The Rockford Files and One Day at a Time, ahead of her breakthrough role as Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

Other credits included Full House, Candid Camera, The Suzanne Show, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Dancing with the Stars, The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Serial Mom.

She also Somers appeared in two Playboy cover-feature nudes, in 1980 and 1984 and was also known for her 1990s infomercials for the ThighMaster exercise equipment, netting her hundreds of millions of dollars.

Source: People, Hollywood Reporter