UPDATE: Sadly, Mary Tyler Moore Has Passed Away at Age 80
According to TMZ, the 80-year-old TV icon Mary Tyler Moore is currently in a Connecticut hospital and is in grave condition.
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Sources close to the family say that she’s in such poor condition, family members are going to the hospital to say their final goodbyes in case she passes away.
Details haven’t surfaced about why she was admitted to the hospital, but she has battled diabetes throughout her life and in 2011 she underwent brain surgery.
Moore became a household name thanks to her role in The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which she starred as Van Dyke’s wife. However, it was her performance in The Mary Tyler Moore that helped her become a comedic icon.
The show earned solid ratings, staying in the yearly top 20 for six years. In its seven seasons, the show earned a record number of Emmys, 29, which it held until 2002 when the record was broken by Frasier.
Considering the success of the series, it came as a surprise to everyone when its cancellation was announced, following one season of poor ratings. The decision was made to end the show to avoid its legacy being tarnished.
Despite being known for her seminal career in TV, Moore also starred in multiple films like Six Weeks, Just Between Friends, and Flirting with Disaster. Her role in Ordinary People earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
Not content to conquer just the world of movies and TV, Moore starred in many Broadway plays, including Whose Life Is It Anyway, which ran for 96 performances, and Sweet Sue, which ran for 164 performances.
Later in her career, the star wrote two memoirs, with the first, After All, revealing that she battled with alcoholism throughout her life. The second memoir, Growing Up Again: Life, Love, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes, focused on her struggles with diabetes and the impact the diagnosis had on her life.
Moore often used her celebrity to bring attention to a various number of charities. She is the International Chairman of the JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) and has frequently teamed up with Farm Sanctuary to bring attention to factory farming and promote more compassionate treatment of farm animals.
Her father, George Tyler Moore, was a longtime American Civil War historian, so she donated funds in 1995 to acquire a historic structure to be used by Shepherd University to use for Civil War studies.
This story is developing…
[H/T TMZ]
