Actress Rue McClanahan, who starred as an ageing, sex-obsessed southern belle in the hit comedy series The Golden Girls, has died aged 76, DPA reported.
Her manager, Barbara Lawrence, told People magazine that she died in a New York hospital Thursday morning after suffering a "massive stroke."
McClanahan won an Emmy award in 1977 as the year's outstanding comic actress for her role on Golden Girls, a sitcom about four middle-aged women sharing an apartment in Miami.
Born in Oklahoma in 1934 she had been married six times.