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Louise Lasser, the star of \u201cMary Hartman, Mary Hartman,<\/a>\u201d Norman Lear\u2019s satirical soap opera, has died. She was 87.<\/p>\n Lasser\u2019s friend Susan Charlotte confirmed to the New York Times<\/a> the actor\u2019s death on Monday in Manhattan.<\/p>\n Lasser was born in New York City on April 11, 1939, to parents Sol Jay Lasser, a tax specialist, and Paula Lasser, a designer. She attended Brandeis University, where she majored in political science and performed in musicals and cabaret. She dropped out her senior year to pursue acting.<\/p>\n \u201cMy career started almost too easy,\u201d she told the Times in 1975. \u201cIn New York the first agent I met sent me on my first audition, and I was signed for a show-stopping part [a replacement for Barbra Streisand in \u2018I Can Get It for You Wholesale\u2019]. After that there was a flood of offers.\u201d<\/p>\n She told the Times that she found it frightening to hit it big with such little training.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to feel prepared,\u201d she said. So, she studied under actor and acting teacher Sanford Meisner and worked hard.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel so strongly that what is worth doing is worth doing the very best you can. But it\u2019s so important to know what you want to do. How you can develop your potentials to the highest, live your life to the richest and fullest.\u201d<\/p>\n Lasser joked in a 1976 article in the Times that her role as Mary Hartman might merit identification beyond being Woody Allen\u2019s ex-wife. The two met in 1962 on a double date \u2014 with other people \u2014 but their chemistry was potent, and they began working together on various projects, including in her first project for television, \u201cThe Laughmakers,\u201d an unaired pilot<\/a> penned by Allen. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we met, I was seeing a friend of his. It was one of those things, well if you think you\u2019re complicated, you should meet so-and-so. And it was Woody,\u201d Lasser told the Toast in a 2013 interview. They \u201cwere meant to be in the same playpen,\u201d she said. \u201cImmediately we just connected. He was with somebody … oh, he was married, that\u2019s right. … So, I met him, and it was so clear the whole night the four of us were there, and neither of us are talking to anyone else, do you know what I mean? … We really understood what the other was saying.\u201d<\/p>\n The two were married from 1966 to 1970. Lasser acted in Allen\u2019s \u201cTake the Money and Run\u201d (1969), \u201cBananas\u201d (1971) and the 1972 film \u201cEverything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).\u201d <\/p>\n Through the early \u201970s, she appeared in various TV movies and television shows including \u201cThe Bob Newhart Show\u201d and \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show.\u201d Somewhere along the way, the biggest producer in television caught wind of Lasser\u2019s chops and wanted her for his pet project, a parody of sudsy daytime dramas called \u201cMary Hartman, Mary Hartman.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n