Arrested Development, Archer Star Jessica Walter Passes Away

Jessica Walter, the screen legend best known of late for her role on Arrested Development, has passed away. Deadline reports that Walter passed away in her sleep at her New York City home on Wednesday at the age of 80.

Walter may be best known by current fans for her work as Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development and her voice work as Malory Archer on FXX’s Archer, but those were just some of the more recent accolades for an actress whose career spanned four decades. Walter had awards show-honored work on both film and television in a career that began in 1960 on stage, where she won the 1963 Clarence Derwent Award for Outstanding Debut Broadway Performance in Peter Ustinov’s Photo Finish. She would quickly move to the screen, starting with a role on Love of Life from 1962 to 1965. During that time she would guest star on several other shows including Route 66, The Defenders, Flipper, and Naked City, while also finding time for her big-screen debut in 1964’s Lillith.

Walter’s work continued steadily from there, with TV roles on shows like Mission Impossible and Mannix along with film roles including Grand Prix for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best New Actress of the Year. She would earn a second Golden Globe nod for Best Actress in 1971’s Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut in which she played the obsessed fan Evelyn Draper. Throughout her career she would return to film sporadically, with roles in such movies as 1979’s Goldengirl, 1984’s The Flamingo Kid, 1994’s PCU, Slums of Beverly Hills in 1998 and Undercover Grandpa in 2017.

Television will always be where Walter is most remembered, though. She won an Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for the titular role in Amy Prentiss in 1974, and appeared in a wide varity of guest and regular roles throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She was the voice of Fran Sinclair in ABC’s puppet sitcom Dinosaurs and played Three’s a Crowd in several episodes of Three’s a Crowd, the spinoff to Three’s Company.

It was Lucille Bluth, of course, which would become her most iconic role. The alcoholic, plotting, hilariously out-of-touch matriarch of the Bluth family on Arrested Development earned Walter both an Emmy nomination and two Golden Globe nods, and launched her to new levels of stardom. She reprised the role in Netflix’s fourth and fifth seasons in 2013 and 2018. She also took on the voice of Malory Archer, a very Lucille-type character in her own right, in FXX’s Archer for all 110 episodes of the show, and voiced Granny Goodness in WarnerMedia’s Harley Quinn animated series.

On behalf of 411, our condolences to the family, friends, and many fans of Jessica Walter’s. She will be missed.