Bunny Levine, the former school librarian who became a prolific character actress in her late 50s, has died at 97.
Levine passed away peacefully in her sleep on Thursday at her home in Tarzana, Calif., according to NBCLA. Police responded to her residence after a report of an unresponsive person and determined her death appeared to be from natural causes.
Born Dec. 22, 1928, in East Orange, N.J., Levine grew up performing in school and local productions from an early age. After graduating from Washington State University in 1951, she returned to New Jersey and spent roughly 25 years as a school librarian and teacher in Teaneck while raising three children with her husband, Bernard.
Living in the Pacific Northwest was “a culture shock at first” after growing up on the East Coast, she told Washington State Magazine in 2013.
Levine did not launch her professional acting career until 1988, when she was 59, making her debut in the horror-comedy “Slime City.” The move into Hollywood came after Bernard’s death in 2003, when she relocated from the New York area to Los Angeles and began booking commercials and acting jobs.
She once spoke about what drew her to acting, a career she had dreamt of since childhood, after decades in education.
“I don’t know that many of us could explain why — it’s just something. Maybe it’s in the genes,” Levine told the Daily Evergreen in March 2025.
“I don’t know if there was any ‘moment.’ I just plugged along, and I would go study and try to get better at my crafts.”
“I feel very blessed to have been able to get back to what I had always wanted since early memory. I wish that everyone could find that happiness,” she added.
Levine’s television credits spanned some of the medium’s most popular series. She played Mrs. Thompson on “Gilmore Girls” and appeared as a friend of Marie on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a character who kept dropping things while admiring Ray’s bottom. Her resume also included “Law & Order,” “Ugly Betty,” “Private Practice,” “Criminal Minds,” “2 Broke Girls,” “Raising Hope,” “Southland,” “New Girl,” “The Mindy Project,” “Fuller House” and “Shameless.”
In 2014, she starred alongside the late James Van Der Beek in an episode of CBS’s “Friends With Better Lives.”
On film, Levine had a small role as a movie theater cashier in Damien Chazelle’s 2016 musical “La La Land,” starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. She also appeared in three Adam Sandler movies: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (2008), “Sandy Wexler” (2017) and “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” (2023).
Levine kept working into her mid-90s. Her final roles included the last season of Netflix’s “The Upshaws” and Mrs. Polanski in the 2026 film “The Cure,” which became her final screen performance.
In the viral moment that defined her unlikely career trajectory, Levine represented a rare Hollywood success story of reinvention after 60. A working mother who spent a quarter-century in New Jersey classrooms, she transformed herself into a reliable presence on both television and film sets, accumulating dozens of credits across four decades without ever becoming a household name. Her persistence and late start made her a quiet inspiration for aspiring performers who believed their window had closed.
Her March 2025 interview with the Daily Evergreen, conducted when she was 96, underscored that she never stopped refining her work even as she approached her centenary.
Levine is survived by her three children.
Her final film, “The Cure,” was released in 2026.