Bunny Levine, the character actress who spent 25 years as a school librarian before building a screen career that stretched from “Gilmore Girls” to “La La Land” to a string of Adam Sandler comedies, died at her Tarzana, California, home on August 20, 2026. She was 97.
Brandon Kjar, her manager, said she died peacefully in her sleep, and confirmed the death on Sunday, August 23. A representative for Levine also confirmed it to NBC Los Angeles. Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department had gone to the residence that morning on a report of an unresponsive person and determined the death appeared natural.
“She was a great and fearless actress and such a nice lady,” Kjar said.
Mike Eisenstadt, her agent, offered CBS News that identical sentence in an emailed statement and went further: “What a full life. She will be missed.” According to Kjar, Levine never stopped chasing parts — she was still auditioning at 97, and her final job came in June.
A Librarian’s Long Detour
Her birth name was Bernice Utal, and she arrived on December 22, 1928, in East Orange, New Jersey. The urge to perform showed up early. It also waited a long time. In the 25 years that followed high school, she shelved the ambition entirely, working in school libraries, raising three kids and earning master’s degrees at both New York University and Columbia University.
Retirement didn’t slow her — it pointed her somewhere else. She enrolled in acting classes and began auditioning, chasing the profession she had deferred for a quarter-century. She was in her fifties when she entered the business. After her husband, Bernard “Bernie” Levine, died in 2003, she moved to Los Angeles and went after the work in earnest.
In a statement, her family said she left a mark on people across both stretches of that life, the years in schools and the years in front of a camera.
The Actors Connection Years
Before Hollywood, there was New York. In 1991, Levine and Bernie Levine, her husband of 53 years, co-founded the Actors Connection in New York City, a venture built to help fellow artists navigate the business and get face time with casting decision-makers. Her family said the pair helped a great many performers push their careers forward.
“Her passion for helping actors has launched countless careers,” the organization said in a statement after her death, thanking Levine for creating a place where the artists she cared so much about could belong.
Guest Roles Added Up to a Career
Read her television résumé straight through and you get a rough tour of the last three decades of American TV: “Law & Order,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Ugly Betty,” “Private Practice,” “Criminal Minds,” “2 Broke Girls,” “Raising Hope,” “Southland,” “New Girl,” “Getting On,” “The Mindy Project,” “Fuller House,” “Shameless,” “Community” and “Dave.” She also turned up in the reality-comedy “Jury Duty.” Of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” she told Mel magazine it was “the first bigger thing I did in Los Angeles.”
Her first screen role came in the 1988 horror-comedy “Slime City,” followed by “Cadillac Man” in 1990. Other film work ran from “The Jimmy Show” to “A Thousand Words” and “La La Land.” She appeared in 2008’s “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” starring actor and comedian Adam Sandler, and worked with him again on 2017’s “Sandy Wexler” and the 2023 Netflix comedy “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.”
The pace held up well into her 90s. She was in “The Invisible Raptor” in 2023 and in two 2024 titles: “Sacramento,” directed by actor and filmmaker Michael Angarano with Kristen Stewart and Michael Cera, and “Thelma,” the comedy headlined by veteran actress June Squibb. Levine attended the Los Angeles premiere of “Thelma” at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on June 14, 2024. In 2026, audiences saw her again in the final season of “The Upshaws” and in “The Cure.”
She was clear-eyed about the kind of parts that found her. “I think of myself as a very unfunny human being. But I’m almost always cast in comic roles,” she told Washington State Magazine in 2013.
Services Set for August 27
Levine is survived by three children, Marty, Francie and Joe, along with two grandchildren, Robin and Jeffrey.
Mourners will gather Thursday, August 27, at 1 p.m., with the service to be held at the Jewish Memorial Chapel in Clifton, New Jersey. The family has asked that memorial gifts go to the Entertainment Community Fund.
Hers is the standard Hollywood arc, run in reverse. The usual version starts with someone young and unattached and ends when the calls stop coming. Levine showed up late, after one full career and a houseful of family, and then stayed. She spent a quarter-century organizing other people’s stories on library shelves before she began telling any of her own — and she was still reading for parts at 97.