Charlotte Rae, best known for her role as the kindly but firm house mother Mrs. Edna Garrett on the 1980s sitcom The Facts of Life, has died following a battle with cancer. She was 92.
In April 2017 Rae announced she had been diagnosed with bone cancer after having survived pancreatic cancer seven years earlier.
Rae's big showbiz break came in 1978, when television producer Norman Lear cast her in the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. Rae played housekeeper Edna Garrett on the show, a character that proved popular enough to spin off into another series that became The Facts of Life, a sitcom about girls in a boarding school and their house mother.
In addition to Rae's son Larry and his wife, Eleanor, survivors include her sister Miriam, and grandchildren Sean, Carly, and Nora.