Bunny Levine, a character actress who spent 25 years as a school librarian before launching an acting career near age 60, has died at her home in Tarzana, California. She was 97. Her manager, Mike Eisenstadt, confirmed she died Thursday in her sleep, and police who responded to the home said her death appeared to stem from natural causes.
Levine’s screen career defied the industry’s usual clock. Born Bernice Levine in East Orange, New Jersey, on Dec. 22, 1928, she loved performing from early childhood but shelved that ambition after college, working as a librarian and raising three children alongside her husband, Bernard, a college professor. She stayed in that role for a quarter century, filling any creative itch through storytelling and school book talks rather than the stage.
Everything changed when she took early retirement. Levine enrolled in acting classes, started auditioning, and began booking work in commercials and soap operas. Her first screen credit came in 1988’s low-budget horror comedy “Slime City,” when she was pushing 60, followed two years later by a part in the Robin Williams vehicle “Cadillac Man.” After her husband died in 2003, she relocated from New York to Los Angeles and leaned fully into the business, joining the unions and steadily picking up guest spots.
Over the next two decades she became a familiar presence on network television, often cast as an “Old Lady,” “Kindly Older Woman” or grandmother figure. Her credits stretched across “Law & Order,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “As the World Turns,” “Chappelle’s Show,” “Criminal Minds,” “Ugly Betty,” “Private Practice,” “2 Broke Girls,” “Community,” “New Girl,” “Southland,” “Shameless” and “Gilmore Girls.” She also worked steadily in film, appearing in Adam Sandler comedies including “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” and “Sandy Wexler,” as well as the Oscar-winning “La La Land” and, more recently, “Thelma” and “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat.”
At barely 4-foot-10, Levine turned her size into a comic asset, building a niche playing sharp-tongued elderly women well into her 90s. Speaking to her college newspaper, The Daily Evergreen, in 2025, she reflected on the pull that performing held over her entire life. “I don’t know why,” she said. “I don’t know that many of us could explain why — it’s just something. Maybe it’s in the genes.” She is survived by her three children.
