Actress Mary Tyler Moore has turned the world on with her smile and talent for the last half-century, first as Laura Petrie in the 1961-66 CBS classic sitcom 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' and then as Mary Richards, a single woman working as a producer in a Minneapolis TV station, in the award-winning 1970-77 CBS comedy 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.
Along the way, Mary Tyler Moore earned seven Emmy Awards, an Academy Award nomination for her dramatic turn in the 1980 best picture Oscar winner 'Ordinary People' and a Tony for her role on Broadway in 'Whose Life Is It, Anyway?'
The 74 years old Moore, added another accolade Thursday when the Screen Actors Guild announced that she would be the recipient of its 2011 Life Achievement Award. The honor will be handed out the during 18th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 29 airing on TBS and TNT.
Besides being an actress in countless feature films such as 'Flirting With Disaster' and 'Six Weeks', TV movies such 'Heartsounds' and 'Stolen Babies', she is also a noted producer. In 1970, she and her then-husband Grant Tinker formed the production company MTM, which not only produced her own series but also such classics as 'The Bob Newhart Show', 'Rhoda', 'Hill Street Blues' and 'St. Elsewhere'.
Mary Tyler Moore has been the international chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation since 1984. In May, Moore went through a successful surgery to have a benign brain tumor removed.
