Sitcom star Suzanne Somers dead at 76

Suzanne Somers, the actress known for playing Chrissy Snow on the television show Three's Company, as well as her business endeavours, has died at age 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 Canadian husband Alan Hamel, her son Bruce and other immediate family were with her.

"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."

Somers was born in 1946 in San Bruno, Calif., to a gardener father and a medical secretary mother. Her childhood, she'd later say, was tumultuous. Her father was an alcoholic, and abusive. She married young, at 19, to Bruce Somers, after becoming pregnant with her son Bruce. The couple divorced three years later and she began modelling for The Anniversary Game to support herself.

She met Hamel, who had hosted game shows and talk shows in Canada. They married in 1977.

She began acting in the late 1960s, earning her first credit in the Steve McQueen film Bullitt. But the spotlight really hit when she was cast as 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 entitled The Blonde in the Thunderbird about her life, 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.

"Creating her was actually intellectual," she told CBS News in 2020. "How do I make her likable and loveable ... dumb blondes are annoying. I gave her a moral code. I imagined it was the childhood I would've liked to have had."

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.