American actress, Charlotte Rae, who played a wise and patient housemother to a brood of teenage girls on the long-running sitcom The Facts of Life, has died.
She was aged 92.
Rae died at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday with her family at her side, said her publicist, Harlan Boll.
The cause of death was not immediately available, but Rae was diagnosed last year with bone cancer after beating pancreatic cancer, Boll said.
A career that encompassed many other TV roles as well as stage and film appearances, Rae originated the character of Edna Garrett in 1978 during the first season of NBC’s comedy Diff’rent Strokes.
Her many stage roles include that of Mammy Yokum, created by her for the 1956 Broadway musical Li’l Abner.
Most of the cast of Diff’rent Strokes have now died: Dana Plato (Kimberley Drummond) in 1999, Gary Coleman (Arnold Jackson) in 2010 and Conrad Bain (Philip Drummond) in 2013.
