Name	Mary Tyler Moore
Height	5' 8
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	29 December 1936
Place of Birth	Brooklyn, New York,
Famous for

At the age of 17, Moore started with a role as "Happy Hotpoint" on television commercials broadcast during Ozzie and Harriet. During these commercials she would dance around on the Hotpoint (a General Electric subsidiary) appliances. (Her time as "Happy Hotpoint" ended when her pregnancy, with only child Richard, became too obvious for her to hide any longer, according to Moore in her autobiography.)

She later appeared in several bit parts in movies and on TV shows, including Bourbon Street Beat, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside Six, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Steve Canyon, and Hawaiian Eye. Moore anonymously modeled on the covers of a number of record albums and auditioned for the role of the older daughter of Danny Thomas for his long-running hit TV show, but was turned down. Much later, Thomas explained that "no daughter of mine could have that [little] nose." Moore's first regular television role was as a telephone receptionist on the show Richard Diamond, Private Detective; in that series, only her legs were shown. (She was canned from the show when she asked for a raise. She was replaced with another actress, also only visible by her legs [also from Moore's autobiography].)


Moore with Dick Van Dyke, co-star of The Dick Van Dyke ShowIn 1961, Carl Reiner cast her in The Dick Van Dyke Show, an acclaimed weekly series based on Reiner's own life and career as a writer for Sid Caesar's television variety show, telling the cast from the outset that it would run no more than five years. Moore's energetic comedic performances as Van Dyke's character's wife, begun at age 23, made both the actress and her signature tight capri pants extremely popular, and she became nationally famous. When she won an Emmy award for her portrayal of Laura Petrie, she said, through her tears, quite incorrectly, "I know this will never happen again!"

In 1970, after having appeared earlier in a pivotal one-hour musical special called "Dick Van Dyke and the Other Woman," Moore was cast in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a half-hour newsroom sitcom featuring Ed Asner as her gruff boss Lou Grant, a character that would later be spun off into an hour-long dramatic series. The premise of the single working woman's life, alternating during the program between work and home, became a television staple that would often be used in the future. After seven seasons, Moore decided to end the series because every possible comedic situation had been developed, and she felt it was better to end on a high note than to let the show's quality slip. After a brief respite, Moore threw herself into a completely different genre. She attempted two failed variety series in a row, Mary, which featured David Letterman and Michael Keaton in the supporting cast and lasted three episodes, and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, which was canceled within three months.

About this time, she also made a one-off musical/variety special for CBS, titled "Mary's Incredible Dream", which featured John Ritter, among others. It did poorly in the ratings and, according to Moore, was never repeated and will likely never see the light of day again because of legal problems surrounding the show.

In the 1985–86 season, she returned to CBS in "Mary", which suffered from poor reviews, sagging ratings, and internal strife within the production crew. According to Moore, she asked CBS to pull the show, as she was unhappy with the direction of the program and the producers.

She also starred in the unsuccessful "dramedy", "Annie McGuire", in 1988.

In 2004, Moore reunited with her Dick Van Dyke Show castmates for a reunion "episode" called The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited. In August 2005, Moore guest-starred as Christine St. George, a high-strung host of a fictional TV show on three episodes of Fox sitcom That '70s Show. Moore's scenes were shot on the same soundstage where The Mary Tyler Moore Show was filmed in the 1970s.


[edit] Theatre
Moore appeared in several Broadway plays. She appeared in Whose Life Is It Anyway, which opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on Feb. 24, 1980 and ran for 96 performances; and Sweet Sue which opened at the Music Box Theatre (transferred to the Royale Theatre) on Jan. 8, 1988 and ran for 164 performances. She was in the cast of Breakfast at Tiffany's in December 1996, but that musical closed during previews.

She appeared in previews of the Neil Simon play Rose's Dilemma at the Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2003 but left before the show opened.


[edit] Movies
Since her debut in 1961's X-15, Moore has starred in several feature films, including Ordinary People for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. It was a role that completely shifted Moore out of the lovable characters she has often been associated with, bringing a cold steeliness to a mother who is incapable of being supportive to her traumatized son. More recently she portrayed Sante Kimes in the made-for-TV movie Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes. Moore also starred opposite Elvis Presley in the 1969 film Change of Habit. She played a nun (the title is a pun) and Presley portrays a doctor. Also appearing in the film is Moore's future television cast member Ed Asner.