Today Hot Report

LOS ANGELES | Estelle Getty, the actress known best for playing the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV’s “The Golden Girls,” has died. She was 84.

Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died Tuesday morning at her Hollywood home, said her son, Carl Gettleman.

Getty spent 40 years struggling for success before landing the role of a lifetime in 1985.

She was in her early 60s when she auditioned to play Sophia. She flunked her “Golden Girls” test twice because it was believed she didn’t look old enough to play 80.

She came prepared for the third audition, however, wearing dowdy clothes and telling an NBC makeup artist, “To you this is just a job. To me it’s my entire career down the toilet unless you make me look 80.” The artist did. Getty got the job and won two Emmys.

“Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her,” former “Golden Girls” co-star Bea Arthur said in a statement.