The oldest working member of the Screen Actors Guild and Academy, Connie Sawyer died peacefully at her home in Woodland Hills, CA. She was 105. Sawyer was known as Hollywood’s oldest working actress who worked even in late 2017.
Sawyer was born on November 27, 1912, and made had made her audiences laugh since before the television was even invented. Her career in the entertainment industry began when she won a talent show in Oakland at the age of 8. When she was 18 years old, she starred in a vaudeville show in Santa Cruz.
Later, she got the opportunity to work in several cameos and roles on programs for nearly six decades. She has over 140 TV and Film credits to her name that includes The Way West, Ada, The Man in the Glass Booth, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Will & Grace, Dynasty, Murder, She Wrote, Hawaii Five-O, Archie Bunker’s Place, Home Improvement, Seinfeld, ER, The Office, How I Met Your Mother and Ray Donovan.
Sophie Tucker, a legendary actress, comedian and singer became Sawyer’s mentor before she went to Broadway. It was in the 1950s when Sawyer got her first chance to act in her film when Frank Sinatra’s manager spotted her in one of the Broadway plays called A Hole in the Head. In the recent decades, Sawyer is best known for her roles in movies such as Dumb and Dumber, The Pineapple Express, and When Harry Met Sally.
Sawyer participated in all activities at MPTF when she was not working. She had lived there for 12 years earlier.
Sawyer is survived by two of her daughters, Lisa and Julie as well as four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She was married to International film distributor Marshall Schacker for about a decade. Sawyer wrote an autobiography about her experiences in Hollywood titled I Never Wanted to Be a Star – And I Wasn’t.
