NEW YORK—Mary Tyler Moore, the star of TV’s beloved “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” whose comic realism helped revolutionize the depiction of women on the small screen, died Wednesday. She was 80.
Moore gained fame in the 1960s as the frazzled wife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” In the 1970s, she created one of TV’s first career-woman sitcom heroines in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
“She was an impressive person and a talented person and a beautiful person. A force of nature,” producer, creator and director Carl Reiner, who created the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” told The Associated Press. “She‘ll last forever, as long as there’s television. Year after year, we’ll see her face in front of us.”
Moore won seven Emmy awards over the years and was nominated for an Oscar for her 1980 portrayal of an affluent mother whose son is accidentally killed in “Ordinary People.”
Tributes came pouring in. “Mary’s energy, spirit and talent created a new bright spot in the television landscape and she will be very much missed,” Robert Redford, director of “Ordinary People,” said in a statement. Ellen DeGeneres took to Twitter to say: “Mary Tyler Moore changed the world for all women.”
