\n\tMaria O\u2019Brien, an actress in Protocol and Matlock, who also worked as an acting coach on Days of Our Lives, died on Feb. 24. She was 75.<\/p>\n
\n\tHer cause of death wasn\u2019t immediately available.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn on Aug. 14, 1950, in Los Angeles, O\u2019Brien grew up in a Hollywood family, as her father was Oscar winner Edmond O\u2019Brien and her mother was musical comedy star Olga San Juan. After following in her parents\u2019 footsteps, she landed her first onscreen credit in 1963 on the TV series Sam Benedict.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe also appeared in the 1984 film Protocol, starring Goldie Hawn and Chris Sarandon, as well as Smile, Good Luck, Promised a Miracle, The Incredible Shrinking Woman,\u00a0Table for Five, False Arrest and In Sickness and in Health.<\/p>\n
\n\tO\u2019Brien\u2019s television credits included Viva Valdez, The Love Boat, How the West Was Won, The Life and Times of Eddie Roberts, CHiPs, Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., Good Morning, Miss Bliss, L.A. Law, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Murder, She Wrote, Nash Bridges, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, Suddenly Susan, Jack & Jill, Spyder Games and For the People.<\/p>\n
\n\tThroughout her time in the industry, she acted alongside Melanie Griffith, Lily Tomlin, Angela Lansbury, Tom Selleck and many others.<\/p>\n
\n\tAside from her time onscreen, O\u2019Brien also worked as an acting coach on the daytime dramas Sunset Beach\u00a0and Passions. This led her to serve as an acting coach on Days of Our Lives for 15 years, a job she held\u00a0until her retirement in 2022.<\/p>\n
\n\tO\u2019Brien also won a Drama-Logue\u00a0award for The Maids by Jean Genet, which was performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\n\tHer father, Edmond, was one of the first celebrities to be diagnosed publicly with Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and\u00a0in 1983, she testified before Congress about the devastation of the disease. Her advocacy was instrumental in securing government funding for Alzheimer\u2019s research at the time.<\/p>\n
\n\tO\u2019Brien is survived by her brother, actor Brendan O\u2019Brien; three children, Thomas Anderson, Danica Anderson and Sean Anderson; and\u00a0her sister, Bridget O\u2019Brien Adelman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria O\u2019Brien, an actress in Protocol and Matlock, who also worked as an acting coach on Days of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46,5033],"class_list":["post-320772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}