Tweet
Her death, in a hospital, just days before her 80th birthday, was confirmed by Cheryl J. Kagan, her publicist, who cited an unspecified prolonged illness.
As a young woman, Ms. Anderson epitomized the American beauty standards of her time with her fresh face, dimples, and big, sparkling eyes. She began her acting career on television shows in the mid-1970s.
Her big break came in 1978, when she was cast as Jennifer Marlowe, a receptionist, on the television show “WKRP in Cincinnati.” The show, which aired on CBS from 1978 to 1982, was about an easy-listening local radio station in Cincinnati that switched to a rock format.
Her role earned her three Golden Globe nominations as well as two Emmy nominations. She later appeared in two episodes of a sequel, “The New WKRP in Cincinnati,” which aired from 1991 to 1993.
Ms. Anderson’s seemingly ditsy, bombshell character was anything but, and her performance as Jennifer showed that looks and smarts could go together. Image
“I was against being like a blond window dressing person, so I made my feelings known,” she said on Australian television in 2017. “And, as we know, Jennifer was the smartest person in the room.” She added, “She just turned into a great, groundbreaking kind of character for women to be glamorous and smart.”
Ms. Anderson’s blond locks were not her natural hair color, and she initially had conflicted feelings about them. She had been a brunette for most of her life, including during her early acting career, and worried that she would not be taken seriously as an actress if she dyed her hair. “I was very much on the fence about it,” she said in the interview.
She entered into a relationship with the actor Burt Reynolds, who would become her third husband, in 1982, when they were filming “Stroker Ace,” a movie comedy revolving around car racing.
Ms. Anderson played a “rather sweet, Marilyn Monroe-like turn as a virginal public relations woman” who was the love interest of Mr. Reynolds’s character, Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The New York Times, dismissing the film as “the must-miss movie of the summer.”
The couple married in 1988 and adopted a son, Quinton Reynolds.
The marriage ended in 1993 in a bitter Hollywood split that would serve as tabloid filler for decades, with both Mr. Reynolds and Ms. Anderson jabbing at each other in interviews.
The two seemed to have patched things up before Mr. Reynolds died in 2018. “We were friends first and friends last,” Ms. Anderson said in 2019. “It’s time to move on.”
In 2008, Ms. Anderson married the musician Bob Flick, her fourth husband, who was a founding member of the 1960s folk group the Brothers Four.
The two had met more than four decades before, on May 17, 1963, as part of a fan photo opportunity for Mr. Flick’s band. Exactly 45 years later, they cut into a wedding cake decorated with that first photo of them.
Loni Kaye Anderson was born on Aug. 5, 1945, in St. Paul, Minn., the daughter of Klaydon Carl Anderson, a chemist, and Maxine Kallin, a model.
In addition to her son, Quinton, and her husband, Mr. Flick, Ms. Anderson is survived by her daughter, Deidra Hoffman; her stepson, Adam Flick; two granddaughters; and two step-grandchildren.
Over the decades, Ms. Anderson amassed more than 60 acting credits.
In 1980, she starred in the biographical drama and made-for-TV movie “The Jayne Mansfield Story,” opposite a young Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Hungarian actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay.
Ms. Anderson continued working well into her 70s. In 2023, she appeared in the Lifetime movie “Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas,” which follows five soap opera actresses who reunite to shoot a Christmas episode.
She remained true to her early television persona well into her later years, still maintaining her bleach-blond hair.
At the premiere of “Ladies of the ’80s,” she reflected on acting in the 1970s and ’80s compared with doing so in more recent times.
Young actors in the 21st century could be “chameleon-like,” she said, whereas in her generation, “everybody had an image, and you stuck with your image.”
She added: “We were kind of put into our image. Into our Loni-suit.”
By Claire Moses
Alexandra E. Petri contributed reporting.