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Betty White: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"A lot of people really find Betty White inspiring — I mean, she's been working as an actor in an industry for more than six decades in a business that doesn't exactly value getting older. There's a lot to admire. Me, I find Betty White annoying. I'm sorry, it's true. Betty, you make me feel bad about myself, you make me feel like a slacker."''|'''[[Sandra Bullock]]'''}}
The grand dame of American TV comedy, '''Betty White''' is currently
White is notable for the number of times she has rebuilt her career based on playing against her previous image:
* In her initial phase, lasting from the 1950s until the early 1970s, she became known to the public through her various sitcoms and her appearances on ''[[Password]]'' and other game shows hosted by her third husband, Allen Ludden. This Betty was a sweet and charming woman, the classic sitcom mother.
* Then she landed the role of Sue Ann Nivens in ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]'', a parody of this sort of character to the point that the creators originally wanted to cast a "Betty White type" in the part. Sue Ann pretended to be that sort of nice person on her TV program, but offscreen she was greedy, bitchy, and man-hungry. This won her two of her [[Grammy Award]]s and set the tenor of her appearances for the next decade or so...
* ...until she was cast on ''[[The Golden Girls]]'', which became probably her most iconic role. She was originally suggested for the role of Blanche, a character more in line with Sue Ann and the character she played on ''[[Mama's Family]]'', but she ended up as Rose Nylund, [[The Ditz]] of the group.
* White's career since the end of ''The Golden Girls'' in 1992 has been playing against her image as Rose. Thus, when she shows up today, expect her to be a [[Racist Grandma]] or some other subversion of Rose's affable ditziness.
White has undergone something of a late-career renaissance in the last year or so. In 2009, she had a supporting role in the successful romantic comedy ''[[The Proposal]]'' starring [[Sandra Bullock]]. She appeared in a famous Snickers ad for the 2010 Super Bowl (which also happened to include [[Abe Vigoda]]), which inspired an originally semi-ironic [[Facebook]] campaign to get her to host the long-running sketch show ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' during Season 35. The campaign was a big hit, and Lorne Michaels brought her on the show, making White the oldest host in the show's history at age 88 and a half (and beat out the only non-celebrity host — Miskel Spillman, who was 80 at the time, helmed the 1977 Christmas show after winning the "Anyone Can Host" contest in Season 3). She also had numerous high-profile guest appearances, like a recurring professor on ''[[Community]]'', and received the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award in 2010. She recently contributed to [[TV Land]]'s [[Network Decay]] by starring in ''[[Hot in Cleveland]]'', although that's hardly a bad thing. In 2012, she began hosting a new prank show on NBC, ''Betty White's Off Their Rockers'', featuring old people pranking youngsters.
She has her own clothing line, and t-shirts with her face on them are, at the moment, [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|huge in Tokyo]].
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