page_title: Linda Lavin
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Linda Lavin / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Linda Lavin and husband Steve Bakunas at Kennedy Center, June 19, 2011.
context_page_description: Linda Lavin is an American actress and singer. She is known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her stage performances, both on Broadway and Off-Broadway. After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s. She began acting on Broadway in the 1960s, earning notice in It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman in 1966 and receiving her first Tony Award nomination in Last of the Red Hot Lovers in 1970. She moved to Hollywood in 1973 and began to work in television, making recurring appearances on the sitcom Barney Miller before getting the title role in hit comedy Alice, which ran from 1976 to 1985. She appeared in many telefilms and later in other TV work. She has also had roles in several feature films. In 1987, she returned to Broadway, starring in Broadway Bound, Gypsy, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, among others. In 2010, she appeared as Ruth Steiner in Collected Stories, garnering her fifth Tony nomination. She starred in NBC's short-lived sitcom, Sean Saves the World as Lorna and the CBS sitcom 9JKL.
context_section_description: Lavin has been married three times. Her first marriage to Ron Leibman ended in divorce in 1980. Her second marriage to Kip Niven, whom she met on the set of Alice, ended in a bitter divorce in 1992. While Lavin has no biological children, she is stepmother to the children of her second husband and plays an active role in their lives and that of her grandchildren, and is stepmother to those of her third and current husband, artist/musician Steve Bakunas, whom she married in 2005. The couple had resided in Wilmington, North Carolina where they were committed community members working together to rehabilitate impoverished neighborhoods including renovating many homes, donating a park to the city and creating a community theatre, the Red Barn Studio. In 1997, Lavin founded The Linda Lavin Arts Foundation in Wilmington, "to promote and foster the advancement of the performing and visual arts, with special emphasis on arts in education. Her foundation has created a theater program called Girl Friends, whose purpose is to raise the self-esteem of at-risk teenage girls of the inner city."
  Both of her ex-husbands, the aforementioned Niven and Leibman, died in 2019 along with Alice co-stars Philip McKeon and Charles Levin.   
  In Wilmington, she was a stage director. One of her directorial credits was a 1998 production of William Shakespeare's As You Like It, updated to a Brazilian jazz style. In both Wilmington and New York she teaches master classes in acting and singing.
  In September 2012 Lavin announced that she intended to sell her home in Wilmington and return to New York City. Lavin and Bakunas have lived in New York City since circa 2013–2014. In July 2016, the Luxury Living website posted Lavin's Central Park South apartment for sale at $1.25 million.
caption: Lavin and husband Steve Bakunas at the Kennedy Center, June 19, 2011
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-S40", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Nero PhotoSnap 1.1.0.5", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:20 07:56:42", "Image ExifOffset": "240", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Make": "SONY", "Thumbnail Model": "DSC-S40", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail Software": "Nero PhotoSnap 1.1.0.5", "Thumbnail DateTime": "2011:06:20 07:56:42", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2442", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4906", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:05:19 16:24:21", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:05:19 16:24:21", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "51/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1728", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}