Cindy Williams, known for her role as Shirley Feeney on the television sitcom Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, died on Wednesday last week at the age of 75, her family revealed Monday.

According to a statement, she died of a brief illness.

“The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” her children, Zak and Emily Hudson, said in the statement released through family spokeswoman Liza Cranis. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”

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Who was Cindy Williams?

Cindy Williams was born in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles, California, on August 22, 1947. Her family moved to Dallas, Texas when she was a year old and returned to Los Angeles when she was ten years old. She has one sibling, a sister named Carol Ann. She attended Los Angeles City College with a theater major.

She began her professional career by landing national commercials, which included Foster Grant sunglasses and TWA. Her first roles in television, among others, were on Room 222, Nanny and the Professor and Love, American Style.

Williams picked up important film roles early in her career: George Cukor’s Travels with My Aunt (1972); as Laurie Henderson, Ron Howard’s character’s high school sweetheart in George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973) for which she earned a BAFTA nomination as Best Supporting Actress; and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974).

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But she was by far best known for “Laverne & Shirley,” the “Happy Days” spinoff that ran on ABC from 1976 to 1983.

She made her Broadway debut as daffy Mrs. Tottendale in The Drowsy Chaperone at the Marquis Theatre on December 11, 2007.

Williams was married to Bill Hudson of the musical trio Hudson Brothers in 1982. The two got divorced in 2000. Together they have two children: a daughter, Emily (born 1982) and a son, Zachary (born 1986).