Doris Roberts
Actress
BORN NOVEMBER 4, 1925 – DIED APRIL 17, 2016, AGED 90
A VETERAN of the stage and screen, Doris Roberts will undoubtedly be best remembered for her portrayal of the overbearing matriarch Marie Barone in US sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
It was a role she credited with “putting my career over the top” and won her four Emmy awards. Considered the show’s rock, she was in every episode from 1996 to 2005, playing Ray Romano’s meddling mother.
More than a decade after the show finished Roberts said she still couldn’t go out without being recognised.
Asked in an interview why the audience seemed to identify with her she replied: “I’m not a bull artist. I tell it like it is. I’m not some celebrity thinking I’m greater than anybody else. I’m one of the people.
“And they know that... I am a lucky son of a gun. I get paid for it.”
Roberts was born in St Louis and grew up in New York after her father, Larry walked out on her and her mother Ann.
She trained at the Actors Studio and made her Broadway debut in a 1955 revival of William Saroyan’s comedy The Time Of Your Life.
She left New York when Lily Tomlin saw her in the Terrence McNally play Bad Habits and brought her to California to do The Lily Tomlin Comedy Hour in 1975.
By then she had already appeared in a number of films, beginning with Something Wild in 1961. Her other films include Barefoot In The Park, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
In the same year that she won the first of her five Emmys for a guest role on the hospital drama St Elsewhere, Roberts landed her then biggest TV series in 1983 playing Mildred Krebs on the detective show Remington Steele opposite Pierce Brosnan.
After “Raymond” went off the air she appeared in various TV series, plays and movies and in 2005 wrote her memoir Are You Hungry, Dear? Life, Laughs And Lasagna.
Roberts was married twice, the first time to Michael Emilio Cannata and the second time to novelist and playwright William Goyen, who died in 1983.
She died in her sleep and is survived by son Michael and three grandchildren.