DeFazio was quick-tempered and defensive; Feeney was naive and trusting. The actors drew upon their own lives for plot inspiration.

“We’d make up a list at the start of each season of what talents we had,” Marshall told the AP in 2002. “Cindy could touch her tongue to her nose, and we used it in the show. I did tap dance.”

Williams told the AP in 2013 that she and Marshall had “very different personalities” but tales of the two clashing during the making of the show were “a bit overblown.”

In 1982, Williams became pregnant and wanted her working hours curtailed. When her demands weren’t met, she walked off the set and filed suit against its production company. She appeared infrequently during the final season.

Williams was born one of two sisters in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles in 1947. Her family moved to Dallas soon after she was born, but returned to Los Angeles where she would take up acting while attending Birmingham High School and major in theatre arts at LA City College.

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Her acting career began with small roles in television starting in 1969, with appearances on Room 222, Nanny and the Professor and Love, American Style.

Her part in Lucas’ American Graffiti would become a defining role, and Lucas also considered her for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, a role that went to Carrie Fisher.

In the past three decades Williams made guest appearances on dozens of TV series including 7th Heaven, 8 Simple Rules and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2013, she and Marshall appeared in a Laverne & Shirley tribute episode of the Nickelodeon series Sam and Cat.

Last year, Williams appeared in a one-woman stage show full of stories from her career, Me, Myself and Shirley, at a theatre in Palm Springs, California, near her home in Desert Hot Springs.

Williams was married to singer Bill Hudson of musical group the Hudson Brothers from 1982 until 2000. Hudson was father to her two children. He was previously married to Goldie Hawn and is also the father of actor Kate Hudson.

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