Kirstie Alley's TV family from "Cheers" and her real-life family are raising their glasses to the late actor.
Alley, who died of cancer at age 71, co-starred alongside Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer and Rhea Perlman, who each fondly remembered her and her breakout role as bar manager Rebecca Howe in NBC's 1980s and '90s sitcom. She won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for the part, which came along in 1987 during the series' sixth season after Shelley Long left the long-running sitcom. Alley's ex-husband, "The Hardy Boys" and "Melrose Place" actor Parker Stevenson, also saluted her.
"I was on a plane today and did something I rarely do," Danson, 74, said Tuesday in a statement provided to the Los Angeles Times. "I watched an old episode of 'Cheers.' It was the episode where Tom Berenger proposes to Kirstie, who keeps saying no, even though she desperately wants to say yes. Kirstie was truly brilliant in it. Her ability to play a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown was both moving and hysterically funny."
