00:00 Suzanne Somers, the effervescent blonde actor known for playing Chrissy Snow on the television
00:05 show "Three's Company" and who became an entrepreneur and New York Times best-selling author, has died.
00:12 She was 76. Somers had breast cancer for over 23 years and died Sunday morning,
00:20 her family said in a statement provided by her longtime publicist, R. Khoury Hay.
00:26 Her husband Alan Hamill, her son Bruce and other immediate family were with her in Palm Springs,
00:32 California. Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16, the statement
00:40 read. Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life and want to thank her millions of fans and
00:47 followers who loved her dearly. In July, Somers shared on Instagram that her breast cancer had
00:54 returned. "Like any cancer patient, when you get that dreaded, it's back you get a pit in your
01:00 stomach. Then I put on my battle gear and go to war," she told Entertainment Tonight at the time.
01:07 "This is familiar battleground for me, and I'm very tough."
01:11 She was first diagnosed in 2000 and had previously battled skin cancer.
01:17 Somers faced some backlash for her reliance on what she's described as a "chemical-free"
01:23 and "organic" lifestyle to combat the cancers. She argued against the use of chemotherapy,
01:30 in books and on platforms like "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which drew criticism from the
01:36 American Cancer Society. Somers was born in 1946 in San Bruno, California, to a gardener father
01:45 and a medical secretary mother. Her childhood, she'd later say, was tumultuous. Her father was
01:52 an alcoholic and abusive. She married young, at 19, to Bruce Somers, after becoming pregnant with
02:00 her son Bruce. The couple divorced three years later and she began modeling for the Anniversary
02:07 Game to support herself. It was during this time that she met Hamill, who she married in 1977.
02:16 She began acting in the late 1960s, earning her first credit in the Steve McQueen film "Bullet."
02:22 But the spotlight really hit when she was cast as the blonde driving the white Thunderbird
02:28 in George Lucas's 1973 film "American Graffiti." Her only line was mouthing the words "I love you"
02:36 to Richard Dreyfuss' character. At her audition, Lucas just asked her if she could drive.
02:43 She later said that moment changed her life forever. Somers would later stage a one-woman
02:50 Broadway show entitled "The Blonde and the Thunderbird" about her life, which drew largely
02:55 scathing reviews. She appeared in many television shows in the 1970s, including "The Rockford Files,"
03:03 "Magnum Force" and "The Six Million Dollar Man." But her most famous part came with "Three's
03:09 Company," which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1984, though her participation ended in 1981.
03:18 On "Three's Company," she was the ditzy blonde opposite John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt in the
03:24 roommate comedy. In 1980, after four seasons, she asked for a raise from $30,000 an episode to $150,000
03:34 an episode, which would have been comparable to what Ritter was getting paid. Hamill, a former
03:41 television producer, had encouraged the ask. The show's response was, "Who do you think you are?"
03:47 Somers told People in 2020. They said, "John Ritter is the star."
03:54 She was promptly phased out and soon fired; her character was replaced by two different roommates
04:01 for the remaining years the show aired. It also led to a rift with her co-stars;
04:07 they didn't speak for many years. Somers did reconcile with Ritter before his death,
04:13 and then with DeWitt on her online talk show. But Somers took the break as an opportunity to
04:19 pursue new avenues, including a Las Vegas act, hosting a talk show and becoming an entrepreneur.
04:27 In the 1990s, she also became the spokesperson for the Thighmaster.
04:31 The decade also saw her return to network television in the 1990s,
04:37 most famously on Step by Step, which aired on ABC's youth-targeted TGIF lineup.
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