KIRSTIE ALLEY
(12 January 1951 - 5 December 2022)
The American actress Kirstie Alley, who became famous through the television sitcom Cheers, has died from colon cancer at the age of 71. Her screen career began in 1978 in television and most of her appearances were on TV, but along the way she also appeared in some high-profile films beginning with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982. Always busy, she was working right up to the year of her death.
Kirstie Alley was born in Wichita, Kansas, to Robert Alley, a lumber company owner, and his wife Lillian. After dropping out of college, young Kirstie moved to Los Angeles for a job in interior design and also to study Scientology. She pursued appearances on TV game shows and won a lot of money. Sadly, her parents were involved in a road accident in 1981 in which her mother died and her father was left badly injured. The following year saw Kirstie making her film debut in Star Trek playing Vulcan Starfleet officer Lieutenant Saavik. On TV she was in Masquerade, a spy series, and later the miniseries North and South, a drama set after the American Civil War.
For cinema, following a couple of low-budget features, Alley appeared in Michael Crichton’s science fiction action film Runaway, with Tom Selleck. At that time (1987) her biggest hit was Carl Reiner’s comedy Summer School with Mark Harmon. Later on, she was also in Reiner’s Sibling Rivalry, a black comedy with Bill Pullman and Carrie Fisher, in which Alley’s character, bored with her marriage, has a fling with a stranger who dies during sex.
Kirstie Alley was cast in the TV sitcom Cheers, following the departure of Shelley Long. Alley played Rebecca Howe who works as a cocktail waitress and eventually becomes the manager of the bar, fighting off the attentions of co-owner Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson. Alley stayed in the show for six years until Cheers finished after its eleventh series, and she won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her troubles.
Back to the cinema in 1989 saw her in a run of very popular comedies starting with Look Who’s Talking, in which a pregnant Alley has a speaking baby inside her. Co-stars were John Travolta, George Segal and the voice of Bruce Willis speaking the utterances of the unborn child. The film was an enormous success and spawned two sequels, unlike John Carpenter’s remake of 1960’s Village of the Damned (based on the book The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham), with Christopher Reeve.
Alley was probably best-known and appreciated not for her dramatic work but for her comedy roles, such as in Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997), but it was only a modest success. Alley made many other comedies including For Richer or Poorer, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Accidental Love, her last film in 2015.
There was more for Kirstie Alley on television and over the years she was in The Love Boat, A Bunny's Tale – as writer Gloria Steinem investigating the Playboy nightclub. She also had her own TV series, Veronica’s Closet, in which she ran a lingerie company giving advice to other women but without any control over her own chaotic lifestyle and failed relationships. Her other series included Dharma & Greg, Without a Trace, Fat Actress, The Hills, Scream Queens and her own self-titled Kirstie (2013-14).
Kirstie Alley was a much-loved actress both in the profession and by her public, because of the bright personality she projected in her work. She was married to Bob Alley, who happened to have the same name as her father, from 1971 to 1977. In 1983 she married the actor Parker Stevenson with whom she adopted two children, William and Lillie. They divorced in 1997. Although raised as a Methodist, she became a devout follower of Scientology, claiming it saved her from her drug dependency. Politically she had supported Donald Trump in the 2016 elections but later withdrew her support even though she still voted for the Republicans in 2020.
MICHAEL DARVELL