Popular American Actress Cloris Leachman Dies At 94

The Oscar and multiple Emmy winner is best remembered as the delightfully neurotic, Phyllis Lindstrom on ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and her own sitcom. 

Her longtime manager, Juliet Green stated that, “It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time. There was no one like Cloris. With a single look, she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh ’till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”

Her character as Phyllis where she claimed was close to her own persona, brought the actress two Emmys as a featured actress in a series during the mid-’70s and made Leachman a household name.

The deceased also won a supporting actress Oscar in the early part of the decade for a far different character, an embittered small-town housewife in Peter Bogdanovich’s elegiac “The Last Picture Show”.

The swift success for the actress, however, came to limelight after two decades of hard work in theatre, television and some films. Leachman was in her 40s when stardom finally hit.

Leachman’s pitch-perfect timing and effortlessness in comedy and her unadorned honesty in drama was the result of many years honing her craft and incorporated her own life experiences as a mother of five children.

So far, Leachman won a total of eight primetime Emmys, both for drama and comedy, and one daytime Emmy.