American Actress Suzanne Somers Dies at 76
Somers had breast cancer for over 23 years and died Sunday morning, her family said in a statement provided by her longtime publicist, R. Couri Hay. Her husband Alan Hamel, her son Bruce and other immediate family were with her in Palm Springs, California.
“Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th,” the statement read. “Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”
In July, Somers shared on Instagram that her breast cancer had returned.
“Like any cancer patient, when you get that dreaded, ‘It’s back’ you get a pit in your stomach. Then I put on my battle gear and go to war," she told “Entertainment Tonight” at the time. "This is familiar battleground for me and I’m very tough.”
She was first diagnosed in 2000, and also had skin cancer. She faced some backlash for her reliance on what she described as a chemical-free and organic lifestyle to combat the cancers. She argued against the use of chemotherapy, in books and on platforms like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which drew criticism from the American Cancer Society.
Somers was born in 1946 in San Bruno, California, to a gardener father and a medical secretary mother. She began acting in the late 1960s, playing the blonde driving the white Thunderbird in George Lucas’s 1973 film “American Graffiti.” Her only line was mouthing the words “I love you” to Richard Dreyfuss’s character.
At her audition, Lucas just asked her if she could drive. She later said that moment “changed her life forever.”
Somers would later stage a one-woman Broadway show titled “The Blonde in the Thunderbird,” which drew largely scathing reviews.
She appeared in many television shows in the 1970s, including “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum Force” and “The Six Million Dollar Man,” but her most famous part came with “Three’s Company,” which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1984 — though her participation ended in 1981.
On “Three’s Company,” she was the ditzy blonde opposite John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in the roommate comedy. In 1980, after four seasons, she asked for a raise from $30,000 an episode to $150,000 an episode, which would have been comparable to what Ritter was getting paid. Hamel, a former television producer, had encouraged the ask.
“The show’s response was, ‘Who do you think you are?’” Somers told People in 2020. “They said, ‘John Ritter is the star.’”
She was soon fired and her character replaced by two different roommates for the remaining years the show aired. It also led to a rift with her co-stars; They didn’t speak for many years. Somers did reconcile with Ritter before his death, and then with DeWitt on her online talk show.
But Somers took the break as an opportunity to pursue new avenues, including a Las Vegas act, writing books, hosting a talk show and becoming an entrepreneur. In the 1990s, she also became the spokesperson for the “Thighmaster.”
Somers returned to network television in the 1990s, most famously on “Step by Step,” which aired on ABC’s youth-targeted TGIF lineup. The network also aired a biopic of her life, starring her, called “Keeping Secrets.”