Jessica Walter, Arrested Development Star, Passes Away At 80

Veteran star of stage and screen Jessica Walter, best known for playing Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development, has passed away at 80. Walter was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 31, 1941, and seemed destined for a performing career, having a musician for a father and attending the city’s High School for Performing Arts. She began acting in theater in her early 20s, appearing on Broadway and winning the Clarence Derwent Awards in 1963 for Outstanding Debut Broadway Performance in Photo Finish by the English actor and writer Peter Ustinov. She quickly moved into TV roles in the mid-1960s and established herself as a dependable performer.

Movie roles quickly followed, with Walter gaining a Golden Globe nomination for Best New Actress in John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix and another Golden Globe nomination in 1971 for Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty For Me. She continued to work throughout the 1980s and 1990s, joining Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs’ voice cast, but it was her more recent work that she will be most remembered for by younger generations. She starred as the savage matriarch Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development across all five seasons, inhabiting the mean character with venom and humor. She also voices the hard-drinking Mallory Archer on Archer across all 11 seasons.

Deadline reports that Bluth passed away on March 24 in her sleep at her home in New York City. Walter’s husband, Ron Liebman, passed in 2019, and so she is survived by her daughter, Brooke Bowman, a Senior VP at Fox Drama. Bowman paid tribute to Walter on Thursday. Bowman says her mother’s greatest pleasure was bringing joy to others and hailed her wit and class. You can read her complete statement on her mother’s passing below:

It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of my beloved mom Jessica. A working actor for over six decades, her greatest pleasure was bringing joy to others through her storytelling both on screen and off. While her legacy will live on through her body of work, she will also be remembered by many for her wit, class and overall joie de vivre.

Walter’s career was one of those rare things in Hollywood for a woman. Not only was she given significant roles as a young woman, but she was allowed to age into new roles and achieve newfound fame in the latter part of her life for playing tough, no-compromise women in their 60s and 70s. She was also unique in winning awards throughout her career, from an Emmy in the 1970s for the TV mini-series Amy Prentiss to her Emmy and SAG nominations for the endlessly quotable Lucille Bluth.

Walter’s legacy will indeed be one of class and wit, as she brought a knowing levity to all of her roles and entertained generations of TV and movie fans. Despite her passing, she will remain in the memories of those who watched and worked with her, and she will be greatly missed.

Source: Deadline

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Daniel Gillespie
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Daniel Gillespie has been a writer and editor since 2009.

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