Bunny Levine, the veteran character actress whose credits included Gilmore Girls, La La Land, Shameless and Thelma, has died. She was 97.
Levine died in her sleep on August 20 at her home in Tarzana, California, her representative Mike Eisenstadt confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Police responded after receiving a report of an unresponsive person and said her death appeared to be from natural causes.
Her resume stretched across decades of television and film, including appearances on Everybody Loves Raymond, Law & Order, Ugly Betty, Criminal Minds, 2 Broke Girls, Community, The Mindy Project, Fuller House and Jury Duty. On film, she appeared in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Sandy Wexler, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah and played a movie theater cashier in La La Land.
What made Levine’s career especially unusual was when it began. As Page Six noted in its report on her death, she spent roughly 25 years working as a school librarian and teacher before returning to an acting ambition she had carried since childhood. Her first professional screen credit did not arrive until she was 59.
Bunny Levine Died at 97 at Her California Home
Levine died at her Tarzana home on August 20, with news of her death emerging several days later. Authorities who responded to the residence said there were no indications of suspicious circumstances and that her death appeared to be from natural causes.
Born Bernice Levine in New Jersey in 1928, she is survived by her three children, Marty, Francie and Joe, and grandchildren Robin and Jeffrey. Her husband of more than five decades, Bernard “Bernie” Levine, died in 2003.
Her family said services will be held at the Jewish Memorial Chapel in Clifton, New Jersey, on August 27. An obituary published by her family also requested that memorial donations be made to the Entertainment Community Fund.
Levine Left Education and Started Again as an Actress
Levine’s path to Hollywood began long before she received her first screen credit. She grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, performing in school and local productions, and later attended Washington State University, where she studied psychology while continuing to act in plays. She graduated in 1951.
After returning to New Jersey, Levine raised three children with Bernard and built a career in education. She worked as a school librarian and teacher in Teaneck for more than two decades before taking early retirement and revisiting the ambition she had set aside.
Acting classes and community theater eventually led to professional work. Her first credited film role came in the 1988 horror comedy Slime City, released when Levine was 59. She continued auditioning and gradually built a screen career that would last nearly four decades.
Levine and her husband also co-founded Actors Connection in New York, an organization designed to help performers develop their careers. After Bernard’s death in 2003, Levine relocated to Los Angeles and threw herself more fully into television, film, commercial and audition work.
She Became a Familiar Face Across Television and Movies
Levine rarely played the lead, but she became a prolific character performer whose credits reached some of television’s best-known series. On Gilmore Girls, she played Mrs. Thompson in the fifth-season episode “But Not as Cute as Pushkin.” Her other television work included Chappelle’s Show, Private Practice, Raising Hope, New Girl, Getting On, Mayans M.C. and The Upshaws.
Her film work was similarly varied. Along with her small part as a theater cashier in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, Levine appeared in multiple Adam Sandler projects and later joined June Squibb and Richard Roundtree in Thelma.
Levine spoke candidly about how much persistence that kind of career required. In a March 2025 interview with The Daily Evergreen, she rejected the idea that there had been one transformative break in her career. “I don’t know if there was any ‘moment,’” she said. “I just plugged along, and I would go study and try to get better at my crafts.”
She also described rejection as an unavoidable part of an actor’s life, recalling advice from one of her teachers that “rejection is the water we swim in.” Her response was to keep studying, auditioning and moving forward.
Levine Was Still Acting Well Into Her 90s
Levine’s late-career work included the 2023 comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty and Josh Margolin’s 2024 film Thelma. In Thelma, she played Mona, an old friend visited by Squibb’s title character and Roundtree’s Ben.
She remained professionally active into 2026, with credits including The Upshaws and the thriller The Cure, in which she played Mrs. Polanski. The latter became her final film role.