Liz Sheridan, actress best known as Seinfeld’s TV mom, dies at age 93
Liz Sheridan, the charming actress best known for her role as Jerry Seinfeld’s adoring TV mom, died early Friday morning. She was 93.
Sheridan died peacefully in her sleep from natural causes, her representative told the Daily News.
Though she had an extensive acting career before her “Seinfeld” role, including a fast romance with a young James Dean, Sheridan was mostly widely seen as Helen Seinfeld, Jerry’s mom who couldn’t believe anyone would dislike her son.
“I have to put lipstick on every time I go out of the house. People yell at me going by in cars,” Sheridan told Entertainment Weekly in 1998. “I love that, and any actor who tells you they don’t is lying.”
Outside of the core four actors, Sheridan was the only person to appear in all nine seasons of the beloved “show about nothing.”
Prior to “Seinfeld,” Sheridan made her name as nosy neighbor Mrs. Ochmonek on “Alf.” She was also popular on Broadway, including in the 1977 musical “Happy End” with Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd.
Born Elizabeth Ann Sheridan in Westchester County on April 10, 1929, both her mother and father were performers and Sheridan naturally followed in their footsteps.
Sheridan’s first love was dance, and she got her professional start as a backup dancer in Broadway shows. In a later interview, she said her favorite was 1978′s “Ballroom” directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett. In 1979, the show won the Tony Award for best choreography.
In the ‘80s, Sheridan moved into television and appeared in dozens of shows, including “St. Elsewhere,” “The A-Team” and “Moonlighting.” Her biggest role was in “Alf,” in which she starred in 34 episodes as the Tanner family’s bothersome neighbor Mrs. Ochmonek.
Sheridan’s first “Seinfeld” episode was the series’ second, and she would earn credits in 23 more during the show’s run, almost always next to Barney Martin as her TV husband Morty Seinfeld.
“It’s been difficult for Barney and I to get other work because we’re so associated with the Seinfelds,” Sheridan explained to EW in 1998.
“If I play a priest or something, they’ll say, ‘Hey, that’s Morty Seinfeld playing the priest!’ Martin added. “In that sense, it’s hurt me, but I wouldn’t change it for all the money in China.”
In 2000, Sheridan revealed a previously unknown part of her life: a torrid love affair with James Dean in the early 1950s, explored in her book “Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life with James Dean: A Love Story.”
“We got to be friends. Then we got to be even better friends and then we decided to live together, which you sort of didn’t do in those days,” Sheridan said in an interview while promoting the book.
She said the two went their separate ways in 1952 when Dean went off to Hollywood and she chose not to follow.
Sheridan was the last surviving “Seinfeld” parent. Martin died in 2005, Jerry Stiller (Frank Costanza) died in 2020 and Estelle Harris (Estelle Costanza) died less than two weeks ago, also at age 93.
