'Golden Girls' Star Estelle Getty Dies

Actress Estelle Getty has died.

Her son, Carl Gettleman, says the co-star of the television show "The Golden Girls" died early Tuesday at home in Los Angeles.

Gettleman said that his mother suffered from advanced dementia.

The diminutive actress spent 40 years struggling for success before landing the role of a lifetime in 1985, playing the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on "The Golden Girls."

And even that almost didn't happen. Getty flunked her audition twice, because the casting directors didn't think she looked old enough to play an 80-year-old woman.

She came prepared for the third tryout, showing up in old clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist that this is her "entire career down the toilet" unless it looks like she's 80.

Getty got the job and won two Emmys throughout the show's run.

The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers.

Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Rue McClanahan in "Mama's Family."

The last character to be cast was Getty's Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Arthur's character.

"She was loved throughout the world in six continents, and if they loved sitcoms in Antarctica she would have been loved on seven continents," Gettleman said. "She was one of the most talented comedic actresses who ever lived."

Getty told AP Radio in a 1988 interview that she thought Sophia and the show had been an incredible boost to older people.

She embraced the fact that people thought of her as "the quintessential older person," and she frequently spoke to senior citizen groups about what it was like to have success at her age.

Getty said she also thought Sophia helped older actors break out of stereotypical roles, like the grandmother or the token land lady next door

After "The Golden Girls," Getty guest-starred on such sitcoms as "Mad About You" and such television dramas as "Touched by an Angel."

On the big screen, Getty starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in the detective comedy "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot," and played Grandma Little in the family comedy "Stuart Little."