US soap star dies

Jeanne Cooper, who played a lead role on the US soap opera The Young and the Restless for four decades, died Wednesday at the age of 84, her son, the actor Corbin Bernsen, said.

Cooper’s acting career dated back to the early 1950s, but she was best known for her portrayal of wealthy matriarch Katherine "Kay" Chancellor on the popular daytime drama, a role she played from 1973 until her death.

"My mother passed away this morning just a short time ago, peaceful with my sister by her side, in her sleep," Bernsen, who starred on the popular drama LA Law in the late 1980s and early 1990s, wrote on his Facebook page.

The New York Times wrote that Cooper had much in common with her character, "apart from everyday occurrences in the soap opera universe like being stranded on a desert island with nothing but her jewellery, having a shopping center fall on her and inadvertently giving one of her grandchildren away."

In 1984 Cooper’s own face-lift was famously incorporated into the show, which included footage from the real-life surgery.

She received two Daytime Emmy awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2008 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. She was given a star on the Los Angeles Walk of Fame in 1993.

Cooper was born 25 October 1928 in Taft, California. She is survived by Bernsen, another son, a daughter and eight grandchildren.

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