Liz Sheridan has died. A veteran TV, film, and stage actor, Sheridan was best known for the 20 or so appearances she made on landmark TV comedy Seinfeld in the 1990s, playing Jerry Seinfeld’s well-meaning mother, Helen. (She had a similar recurring but pivotal role on the same network in the ’80s as nosy neighbor Raquel Ochmonek on ALF.) A dancer and singer in addition to her work as an actor, Sheridan continued performing well into her 80s, including starring opposite Andy Griffith in a romantic comedy, Play The Game, that was his final film role—a performance that saw her just as game for an octogenarian sex scene with Andy Griffith as she was for the accumulated nonsense she weathered alongside the rest of the Seinfeld clan. Sheridan reportedly died of natural causes this week; per Deadline, she was 93.
Born in New York, Sheridan came up in the city’s nightclub and theater scenes—where, notably, she met and became romantically attached to a young James Dean when they both were in their 20s, recounting their romance in her 2000 book Dizzy And Jimmy. After the pair split, Sheridan spent a few years in the Caribbean as a nightclub dancer and singer, before ultimately returning to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. (Contemporaries and co-stars at the time included Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd.)
Eventually Sheridan transitioned to the screen, though, moving to Hollywood in the 1970s. There, she filmed a number of one-shot roles on series like Kojak, The White Shadow, The Facts Of Life, Moonlighting, and more. She didn’t score a major role until 1986, though, when she was cast as busybody Mrs. Ochmonek in NBC’s ALF. (Although she brought her own spin to the character, the role was pretty clearly working in the archetype of Bewitched’s Gladys Kravitz—amusing mostly in that Sheridan and Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery were long-time and close friends.) Although never part of the show’s main cast, Sheridan appeared in 34 episodes of the four-season show, often acting as an obstacle for the Tanner family’s efforts to keep their alien roommate, Gordon Shumway, a secret from the world at large.
In a similar way, Sheridan was never part of the main cast of Seinfeld—but her performance as a mother who could simply never understand why someone wouldn’t love her baby boy was a recurring tool in the show’s comedic kit. Typically paired with the late Barney Martin, who played Seinfeld’s fictional father, Morty, Sheridan was a key part of building the tension in any number of Seinfeld episodes, usually by taking only the sweetest, most well-intentioned actions possible. (She could also toss out a venomous “Hello, Newman” with the best of them.)
Liz Sheridan had a long, strange, and exciting career, one that transcended the two roles she’s almost certainly best known for—which, it’s worth remembering, arrived 10 and 20 years, respectively, into even the most high-profile portions of her long body of work. As Helen Seinfeld, she embodied a very specific incarnation of the “I don’t want to be a bother” type of TV mothering, while also imbuing the role with comic timing that perfectly matched the tone of one of the most successful comedies in TV history.
Her final credited film performance was in 2010. She died earlier today; Jerry Seinfeld posted a tribute to her on Twitter this afternoon, calling her “the sweetest, nicest TV mom a son could wish for.”