Kirstie Alley was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1951, but it wouldn’t be long before she high-tailed it from home and started her travels from the small screen to the silver, and into the hearts of America.
The daughter of a lumberman and one of three children, Kirstie Alley moved to Los Angeles after dropping out of college in her sophomore year.
While working as an interior designer, she appeared on a string of game shows and for the first time was broadcast into living rooms across the nation. It was just the beginning.
In 1982, just past 30 years old, Kirstie Alley landed a part in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was followed by Blind Date in 1984, and then the television series North and South a year later.
She scored a hit alongside Mark Hamon in the 1987 comedy Summer School and found herself on the way to fame the same year after landing the role of Rebecca Howe in the hit television sitcom Cheers.
As Rebecca, the dry and droll-witted manager of the Cheers bar, Kirstie Alley shone and took home the 1991 Emmy for actress in a lead position. Receiving the honour, Kirstie Alley’s spirited character and sharp sense of humour came to the forefront, as she thanked her husband, Parker Stevenson, for giving her the big one for the last eight years.
In 1989 her movie career started to soar when she appeared alongside John Travolta in the first Look Who’s Talking film. The film grossed $300 million and was followed up by a couple of sequels.
She won her second Emmy award in 1994 for David’s Mother, a made-for-television movie in which Kirstie Alley portrayed a mother caring for an autistic son.
By 1995 she had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as her film and television credits continued to rise, adding a notable performance as the proprietor of a New York City lingerie company in Veronica’s Closet from 1997 to 2000.
Some of Kirstie Alley’s other film credits include Sibling Rivalry in 1990, It Takes Two in 1995, For Richer or Poorer in 1997, and Drop Dead Gorgeous in 1999.
In 2005 she starred in her show Fat Actress, a predominantly unscripted comedy that explored how her body image became the centrepiece of her career and tabloids of the day.
Kirstie Alley’s weight came to the forefront of her public image around 2004 after tabloids relentlessly covered her weight increase, but she was fierce, never backing down, no matter what media outlet endeavoured to destroy her.
Kirstie Alley was a stunning woman and a fantastic actress who was badly ostracised by Hollywood for her political beliefs, but she will still be sorely missed, and anyone who followed her social media would know that she was defined by her love of being a Grandmother, an animal enthusiast and avid cook, along with being a no-nonsense woman when it came to fools endeavouring to mess with her.
And whoever or whatever she supported politically, why should that be controversial? We should all be able to support whomever we want, without fear or repercussion.
Personally, I can’t stand Donald Trump, and I wasn’t actually that bothered that she liked Donald – perhaps she saw something in him that no one else could, but she was a gifted artist, and it sure shows how nasty liberal Hollywood can really be. God forbid an actor be a free-thinking individual.
Her fearlessness should be respected. She had a mind of her own and didn’t swallow the kool-aid, and she was unapologetically herself!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 