Mary Tyler Moore

Season 5, Episode 513

Original Airdate: October 24, 1999

Mary Tyler Moore is one of most recognized faces in television, largely due to her performances as the classic sitcom wife, Laura Petrie, and the seminal 1970's girl, Mary Richards.

As a child, Moore moved with her family from her birthplace in New York to California, where she began to study dance. One of her first jobs was in an appliance commercial as a dancing elf called Happy Hotpoint.

In 1961 she wowed everyone in her audition for her The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the five years that the show ran, her role expanded and she became one of television's most beloved comediennes. In the 1970s she again struck gold with the start of her own sitcom. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was character-driven, reinventing the situation comedy.

Moore's talents were not, however, limited to the television screen. In 1979 she successfully replaced Tom Conti in the hit Broadway play Whose Life Is It Anyway. Further proving her range she gave a finely tuned and subtle performance as the emotionally crippled mother in Robert Redford's Ordinary People, earning her an Academy Award nomination.

She has won several Emmys and Golden Globes for her film and television work. In the 80s, Moore continued to show her astonishing range in TV movies such as Gore Vidal's Lincoln (1988). More recently, she had great success on the big screen in David O. Russell's comedy Flirting With Disaster (1996).