Louise Lasser

A dizzy comic presence in films and television in the early 1970s, actress Louise Lasser came to fame in "Take the Money and Run" (1969) and other early films by her then-husband Woody Allen before achieving stardom as a bewildered housewife on Norman Lear's controversial "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (syndicated, 1976-77). Lasser's distracted, slightly anesthetized persona was perfect as the frazzled Mary, but the pressures of television soon drove her to abandon the series. When she rebounded in the 1980s, an older Lasser segued into a string of neurotic matriarch roles, the best of which was as Ben Gazzara's damaged wife in Todd Solondz's "Happiness." Though she never resumed the heights of her popularity in the 1970s, Lasser remained one of Hollywood's most eclectic personas.