R.I.P. Sweet Sophia

Estelle Getty Passes Away at 84



Estelle Getty, the actress best known for her role as the feisty Sophia on The Golden Girls -- though we'd like to remember her work as Sylvester Stallone's mother in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot -- has died at the age of 84, according to reports.

On The Golden Girls -- which from 1985 until 1992 -- and its less popular spinoff, The Golden Palace, she played Sophia Petrillo, the mother of Bea Arthur's character Dorothy. She won an Emmy in 1988 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and won a Golden Globe for the same role in 1986 (though she also won a Razzie Award for her work in 1992's Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot).

In a 1995 interview, the tiny Gettty -- she was under five feet tall -- admitted that many of her biggest fans were children.

"I think they look upon me as an old child, because I'm so little," she said.

It took Getty decades before she found fame on The Golden Girls -- which also starred Betty White and Rue McClanahan -- and in the same interview she pointed to her height as a reason.

"Being tiny has been difficult for me in a business that regarded physicality as the most important part of your life," she said. "And I always had to fight against the fact that I could do things even though I was small. And eventually I proved to them I could play mother to six footers."

She proved that size isn't everything when she appeared alongside Sly Stallone in the infamous action-comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot -- directed by Canadian Roger Spottiswoode -- as a gun-totting mamma.


Her last role, according to IMDB, was an episode of the short-lived TV series Ladies Man, in 2000. Her other film and TV credits include: Stuart Little, Mad About You, Touched by an Angel, Blossom, and Tootsie.