Audra Lindley

Audra Marie Lindley was born in Los Angeles, California into a show-business family; her father, Bert Lindley, was a stage and film actor. She got her start in Hollywood as a stand-in, which eventually progressed to stunt work. After a while, though, she found stunt work not to her liking and went to New York in her twenties to take her talent to the stage. Among her many Broadway plays were "On Golden Pond", "Playhouse 90", "Long Day's Journey Into Night", "Horse Heavens", and many others. She was married twice--once to actor James Whitmore--and raised five children.She appeared in many films and TV shows, and is probably best-known for her work as zany, randy, lovable doyenne Helen Roper, the sex-deprived wife of skinflint landlord Stanley Roper on Three's Company (1976); the Roper characters were later spun off into their own sitcom, The Ropers (1979)).In the fall of 1997 she was doing recurring work on Cybill (1995) and Nothing Sacred (1997) when she died of complications from leukemia.