That darn cancer has taken another beloved star: Actress Alaina Reed Hall passed away after a long battle with breast cancer last Thursday. She was 63.
Hall, best known for her roles on 227 and Sesame Street, has been very public about her ongoing battle with breast cancer. She participated in the documentary Breast Cancer Examined: An African-American Perspective, to commemorate 2009 National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and share her approach to fighting the disease.
Hall began her career in Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including Chicago and Hair, before being cast as Gordon’s little sister Olivia on Sesame Street in 1976. She left the show in 1988. Alaina later starred on the hit sitcom 227 as the sassy Rose Lee Holloway. She began a romance with her co-star Kevin Peter Hall; the 7′2″ actor who rose to fame in the 1987 film Harry and The Hendersons. The couple later married both on and off-screen. However, the fairy-tale romance was short-lived. Kevin died from complications of AIDS — which he contracted through a blood transfusion –in 1991.
