Louise Lasser, whose wide-eyed, quietly frazzled performances made her a distinctive presence in American comedy of the 1970s, has died at 87. She was best known as the title character of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," a satirical soap opera that skewered television and suburban life while treating its heroine's small breakdowns with a strange tenderness.
The role that defined her
The show, a creation of the producer Norman Lear, ran five nights a week across the 1976-77 seasons and became a cult sensation, The Hollywood Reporter reported. As Mary Hartman, a housewife slowly coming apart amid a barrage of consumerism and calamity, Lasser gave a performance that was at once funny and unsettling, and that anchored the program's parody in something recognizably human. It brought her an Emmy nomination and a burst of fame, including magazine covers.
The Woody Allen years
Before that, Lasser had built a screen career during and after her marriage to the writer and director Woody Allen, to whom she was wed from 1966 to 1970. She appeared in several of his early comedies, among them "Bananas," in which she had a leading role, Variety reported. Her understated style, playing it straight amid the surrounding zaniness, made her a useful foil in that run of films.
A New York life in the theater and beyond
Born in New York City in 1939, Lasser studied acting with the influential teacher Sanford Meisner and made her Broadway debut in the early 1960s, Deadline reported. In later decades she continued to work in film and television, including a guest turn on the HBO series "Girls" for a new generation of viewers, and she taught and directed, passing on her craft in the city that had always been her home.
If her greatest fame came and went quickly with "Mary Hartman," the character endured as a touchstone of 1970s satire, and Lasser's performance, delicate, deadpan and a little heartbreaking, remained its reason. She is remembered as an actress who could find the ache inside a joke, and make it land.
