Actress Lisa Loring, first Wednesday Addams, dead at 64

NEW YORK

American actress Lisa Loring, who played the child character Wednesday Addams in the original “The Addams Family” television series in the 1960s, has died. She was 64.

Her death from a stroke, reported by US media, comes a couple of months after the release on Netflix of spinoff show “Wednesday,” starring Jenna Ortega.

Loring “passed away on Saturday surrounded by her family,” longtime agent Chris Carbaugh told CNN in a statement on Jan. 30.“She brought to life one of the most iconic characters in Hollywood history that is still celebrated today,” Carbaugh added.

Laurie Jacobson, a producer and close friend of Loring wrote in a Facebook post that the actress had “suffered a massive stroke brought on by smoking and high blood pressure.”

Loring had been on life support for three days before her family “made the difficult decision to remove it,” she wrote.“She is embedded in the tapestry that is pop culture and in our hearts always as Wednesday Addams,” Jacobson added.

Loring, born Lisa Ann DeCinces in the Marshall Islands, was cast aged six as the pigtail-wearing Wednesday in the sitcom in 1964. It would be her most famous role and set the standard for subsequent portrayals of Wednesday.

Actress Christina Ricci took up the mantle in the 1991 film “The Addams Family” before Ortega followed up as the title character in Netflix’s Tim Burton-directed “Wednesday.”