{"id":866121,"date":"2026-08-24T01:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/866121\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T01:02:12","slug":"bunny-levine-death-hollywood-actress-dies-at-age-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/866121\/","title":{"rendered":"Bunny Levine death: Hollywood actress dies at age 97"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beloved actress Bunny Levine has died<\/a> at age 97.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The former librarian who built a second career in Hollywood<\/a> through roles in major TV shows<\/a> and movies died in her sleep on Thursday at her home in Tarazana, California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Beloved actress Bunny Levine has died at age 97. \u00a0Photo by Amanda Edwards\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

NBC Los Angeles<\/a> said police responded to her home after they received a report of an unresponsive person. Police believe her death was from natural causes.<\/p>\n

Levine didn\u2019t launch her career in the entertainment industry until the late 1980s, when she was almost 60 years old.<\/p>\n

Before that, she had worked as a school librarian and teacher in Teaneck, New Jersey for about 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of her most notable roles include playing Mrs Thompson on Gilmore Girls<\/a>, and her appearance on Everybody Loves Raymond<\/a>, where she played a friend of Ray\u2019s mother Marie.<\/p>\n

Her other acting credits included Law & Order<\/a>, Criminal Minds, 2 Broke Girls, Ugly Betty, Friends with Better Lives, Raising Hope, Shameless, Fuller House<\/a>, New Girl, Private Practice and more, according to her IMDB.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just the small screen for Levine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had a small role in the 2016 hit musical La La Land alongside Ryan Gosling<\/a> and Emma Stone<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also appeared in Adam Sandler\u2019s You Don\u2019t Mess With the Zohan in 2008, Sandy Wexler in 2017 and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah in 2023.<\/p>\n

Her final movie role was as Mrs Polanski in the 2026 movie The Cure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A career in Hollywood came later in life for Levine. Pictured alongside the late James Van Der Beek in Friends with Better Lives. \u00a0Photo by Robert Voets\/CBS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s first professional acting credit came in 1988, when she landed a role in the horror-comedy Slime City at age 59.<\/p>\n

She was born in December 1928, in East Orange, New Jersey, where she grew up and attended high school. She performed in school and local productions from an early age.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when she graduated from university, she became a school librarian, moving back to New Jersey with her husband Bernard where they raised three kids together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After Bernard died in 2003, she moved to Los Angeles where she started to book more commercials and acting jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2025, she opened up about what drew her to acting, and revealed it was a career she dreamt of since being a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that many of us could explain why \u2013 it\u2019s just something. Maybe it\u2019s in the genes,\u201d Levine told the Daily Evergreen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if there was any \u2018moment\u2019. I just plugged along, and I would go study and try to get better at my crafts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very blessed to have been able to get back to what I had always wanted since early memory. I wish that everyone could find that happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beloved actress Bunny Levine has died at age 97.\u00a0 The former librarian who built a second career in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":["post-866121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}