After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s. She began acting on Broadway in the 1960s, earning notice in "It\'s a Bird...It\'s a Plane...It\'s Superman" in 1966 and receiving her first Tony Award nomination in Last of the Red Hot Lovers in 1970. She moved to Hollywood in 1973 and began to work in television, making recurring appearances on the sitcom Barney Miller before getting the title role in hit comedy Alice, which ran from 1976 to 1985. She appeared in many telefilms and later in other TV work. She has also had roles in several feature films.\n', '

In 1987, she returned to Broadway, starring in Broadway Bound (winning a Tony Award), Gypsy (1990), The Sisters Rosensweig (1993), The Diary of Anne Frank (1997–1998) and The Tale of the Allergist\'s Wife (2000–2001), among others. In 2010, she appeared as Ruth Steiner in Collected Stories, garnering her fifth Tony nomination. She starred in NBC\'s short-lived sitcom, Sean Saves the World as Lorna and the CBS sitcom 9JKL.\n', '

Lavin was born in Portland, Maine, the daughter of David J. Lavin, a businessman; and Lucille (née Potter), an opera singer. The Lavin family were active members of the local area Jewish community. Her family was musically talented, and Lavin has been onstage since the age of five. She attended Waynflete School before enrolling in the College of William & Mary. While at William and Mary, she performed with the William and Mary Theater in many productions directed by long-time Professor Howard Scammon. In the summer of 1958, she played one of the leads in The Common Glory, an outdoor drama written by Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Paul Green and staged at an amphitheater on campus. Upon her graduation from William and Mary, she had already received her Actors\' Equity Association card. She was a member of the Compass Players in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, Lavin had appeared in several Broadway shows and appeared on the 1966 cast recordings of The Mad Show performing Stephen Sondheim\'s "The Boy From...". From It\'s a Bird...It\'s a Plane...It\'s Superman, one of her numbers, "You\'ve Got Possibilities", was the album\'s best-received song and was called "The one memorable song...flirty, syncopated" by the Dallas Observer.\n', '

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