Although she worked on several hit movies, Kirstie Alley, who died Monday at 71, will always be remembered as a television star. Alley was the unforgettable leading lady in Cheers. She was actually the second lead in Cheers. Replacing Shelley Long in the show's sixth season, she joined the Bostonian bartenders and drinkers Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman and Kelsey Grammer as Rebecca Howe, the short-tempered manager of the store. reclusive who desperately seeks a rich husband.
Alley was late for Cheers but the joy was good, because Howe's character made her famous all over the world and brought her an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Before landing the Cheers bar, Alley already had a promising career in film and television. He made his big screen debut by boarding the Enterprise ship in Star Trek II. Khan's Wrath (Nicholas Meyer, 1982). His performance garnered good reviews and landed him a few supporting roles in hit films such as John Irvin (1984), a sports melodrama starring John Hurt.
In 1985, he joined the cast of one of the stellar drama series of the time, North and South, which, set in the Civil War, followed in the wake of Gone with the Wind, with Patrick Swayze, James Read and Lesley- Anne Down as stars.
Later he went on to headline comedies such as Tropical Spree (Carl Reiner, 1987) alongside Mark Harmon or action films such as Shoot to Kill (Roger Spottiswoode, 1988). And while she continued to give life to the acid Rebecca Howe, her opportunity came on the big screen accompanied by John Travolta in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), a family comedy that hit the box office and had two sequels with the same protagonists, Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993).
In 1993 Alley was on the crest of the wave, but Cheers closed its doors and the actress's career entered a crisis stage. She had a few roles in quality ensemble cast films like Taking Harry Down (Woody Allen, 1997), but she was relegated to B-movies like Town of the Damned (John Carpenter, 1995). She stuck her head out for three seasons as the lead on the sitcom Veronica's Secret and then became headline fodder in the gossip for her devotion to the Church of Scientology and her weight gain.
Alley, a recognized beauty with green eyes and long hair, was left. She confessed that she ate three eggs for breakfast, as many pieces of bacon and that she ate loaves of bread instead of slices. She came to exceed 100 kilos. But she knew how to make a virtue of necessity and in 2005 she was enrolled in the series Fat actress, where she was an overweight actress with difficulties finding work. After that bump, Alley recovered her figure and exhibited her big guy in a big way on the Oprah Winfrey show. In recent years, she has moved away from the cameras, although she has participated in some documentaries. Her career had ups and downs, but the public will always remember her as the unforgettable star of Cheers.
