Photo by Alan Light · CC BY 2.0

Estelle Getty was in her sixties, with a modest career in regional theater, when she was cast as Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls (1985–1992) — a role that won her a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy and made her, for a generation of viewers, the definitive wisecracking Italian-American grandmother, despite being only a year older than her on-screen daughter.