Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days star Cindy Williams has died after a “short illness,” her household confirmed on Monday. She was 75. The actress was finest identified for taking part in Shirley Feeney reverse Penny Marshall’s Laverne on the beloved sitcoms.
Williams’s youngsters, Zak and Emily Hudson, issued a press release to Yahoo Entertainment saying that Williams handed away peacefully on Jan. 25.
“The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” household spokesperson Liza Cranis shared on Monday. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”
Born simply exterior of Los Angeles, Williams began appearing in highschool the place she shared the stage with Sally Field, based on the actress’s web site. After graduating faculty, the place she majored in Theater Arts, Williams landed her first tv roles in Room 222, Nanny and the Professor and Love, American Style. Movie roles adopted as she starred in director George Lucas’s traditional 1973 movie American Graffiti alongside Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford. The following 12 months, she starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Williams’s largest break got here in 1975 when she was solid in ABC’s Happy Days. Williams’s character Shirley and her finest buddy Laverne DeFazio (Marshall) went on a double date with Richie (Ron Howard) and Fonzie (Henry Winkler). The duo’s scene-stealing roles led to the spinoff Laverne & Shirley, following the roommates as they labored at a Milwaukee bottling manufacturing facility within the 1950s and ’60s. Laverne & Shirley ran for eight seasons and was some of the in style reveals on tv throughout its run.
Thanks to Williams and Marshall’s energetic onscreen chemistry, Laverne & Shirley, is broadly thought-about some of the iconic feminine friendships in tv historical past. Williams and Marshall remained pals offscreen and appeared collectively in 2004 for the joint unveiling of the celebrities on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. When Marshall, who later directed such movies as Big and A League of Their Own, died in 2018 on the age of 75, Williams described it as “a unprecedented loss.”
Williams was nonetheless entertaining audiences previous to her demise. Last 12 months, she accomplished a nationwide theater tour of her one-woman present: Me, Myself and Shirley.
Tributes are pouring in from Williams’s friends on Monday night time as information of her demise made headlines.
