Just three weeks away from her 100th birthday, beloved actress, comedian and American icon Betty White has died at the age of 99.
White was best known for her work on sitcoms, including her Emmy-winning portrayals of Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls.”
In a 2021 interview with “People” days before her 99th birthday, White credited her longevity to being “blessed with good health” and “a sense of humor.”
“Don’t take yourself too seriously,” she told the magazine. “You can lie to others — not that I would — but you cannot lie to yourself.”
The actress was born in Oak Park, Illinois, on Jan. 17, 1922, as Betty Marion White. But before she turned 2, amid the Great Depression, her family moved to the Los Angeles area, where her show business career kicked off at age 8 with a role on the radio program “Empire Builders.”
White’s first dream was to become a forest ranger, but at the time women weren’t allowed to hold that job. (The U.S. Forest Service named her an honorary forest ranger at age 88.)
