Suzanne Somers has died at the age of 76, two days shy of her 77th birthday.
The Three’s Company star passed away following a relapse of breast cancer.
Here, we’ll be taking a look back at her life and storied career, from her start as Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company to playing the matriarch on Step by Step.
Also known for her work as a fitness guru, Suzanne also helped popularize the ThighMaster when she served as a spokeswoman for the fitness machine.
In addition to acting, the blonde beauty was a model, author, mother and wife.
Three’s Company was Suzanne’s breakthrough role in 1977, with the California born stunner playing Chrissy the secretary, a stereotypical dumb blonde who shared an apartment with John Ritter’s culinary student character Jack Tripper and Joyce DeWitts’ Janet Wood, a florist.
However, Suzanne would ultimately be fired from the show in 1980 after requesting a pay increase that was comparable to John’s salary of $150,000 an episode.
After the network refused her request — offering a meager $5,000 dollars more.
The fitness maven’s husband, Alan Hamel, recounted to The Hollywood Reporter at the time that ‘The night before we went in to renegotiate, I got a call from a friend who had connections high up at ABC and he said, ‘They’re going to hang a nun in the marketplace and the nun is Suzanne.’
After Suzanne was fired from the show that made her a star, she worked gigs in Las Vegas, even posing in Playboy for the paycheck.
However, she found her moneymaker in 1990 — the ThighMaster.
The American Graffiti star went on to represent the workout tool in informercials, in addition to selling them herself.
She told CNBC that she stopped counting how many ThighMasters she sold after the ’10 million’ milestone, later revealing on the Hollywood Raw podcast with Dax Holt and Adam Glyn that she had pulled in ‘$300 million,’ in ThighMaster sales over the years.
When asked by CNBC why she felt her sales technique was so successful, Suzanne humbly replied, ‘I sell to my age group, that’s what I know.’
