Salute to a sitcom sweetheart TEARS FOR FUNNY GIRL KIRS TIE

Hollywood is in shock as it farewells the comic who loved po king fun at herself

She was the sassy actress who burst into fame on the hit sitcom Cheers in the 1980s and was as loved for her surprisingly frank confessions about her personal life as she was for her comedic skills.

Kirstie Alley died on December 5, aged 71, taking not just her fans but her many Hollywood friends by surprise. The beloved actress had a short battle with colon cancer before she passed away, surrounded by her closest family.

Born on January 12, 1951, Kirstie’s early years didn’t exactly point to a future as a world-renowned actress: at 19, she married high school sweetheart Bob Alley – with whom she coincidentally shared a surname – and dabbled in interior design before trying her luck in Hollywood.

There, in the mid-’70s, she appeared in a handful of game shows and by the end of the decade, she’d divorced Bob and was dealing with a devastating cocaine addiction.

“I understood hell – depression, anxiety, addiction, failure and loss,” she later recalled. “I’d done enough cocaine to kill several people. I weighed 112 pounds [50kg].”

It was the controversial Church of Scientology that gave her a path out of the quagmire: she joined the organisation in 1979, entered its drug treatment programme and never looked back.

Two years later, Kirstie landed an audition for a role in the blockbuster movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

“I had done nothing and I faked my resumé,” she later confessed. “I’m sure everyone knew it, but I thought it sounded good.”