Bunny Levine, ‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘La La Land’ actor, dies at 97

Bunny Levine, a school librarian turned Hollywood actor, has died. She was 97.

The Tarzana resident died in her sleep Aug. 20, her representative Mike Eisenstadt confirmed to The Times.

Born Bernice Utal on Dec. 22, 1928, in East Orange, N.J., to parents Rudolph Utal and Elsie Elizabeth Rubin, the actor had a lifelong passion for entertainment during the golden age of Hollywood cinema. In her IMDb autobiography, she recalled early memories of subjecting relatives to renditions of “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” from the 1935 film “The Night Is Young.”

But Levine would put those acting dreams on pause while she focused on raising three children alongside her husband, Bernie Levine. Working primarily as a school librarian — with book talks and storytelling sessions — helped her “fill her performing aspirations,” she recalled. Levine held two master’s degrees, from New York University and Columbia University.

After taking early retirement, she took acting classes and auditioned for roles, beginning her career with magazine ads and commercials. Her earliest acting credit was the 1988 cult classic “Slime City”; Levine was 60 at the time. In 1991, Levine and her husband founded Actors Connection in New York City, an education and networking acting hub.

After the death of her husband in 2003, Levine relocated to Los Angeles, where she continued booking one- to two-episode roles on prominent shows including “Gilmore Girls,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Ugly Betty,” “Criminal Minds,” “2 Broke Girls,” “New Girl,” “The Mindy Project,” “Fuller House,” “Shameless” and more.

“I think of myself as a very unfunny human being. But I’m almost always cast in comic roles,” Levine wrote in her IMDb profile.

Brandon Kjar, Levine’s manager, said that she continued to audition at 97 and worked in June, adding that “she was a great and fearless actress.”

Her most recent credits included roles this year on the TV show “The Upshaws,” the David Dastmalchian-led film “The Cure,” and a 12-minute short, “Achiever,” which premiered at South by Southwest in March.

With more than 100 credits to her name, she considered herself one of “the most energetic and agile” older actors around and “the oldest living student,” she wrote in her IMDb profile.

She said her philosophy was “you can never stop learning and exercising the acting muscle.”

Services for Levine will be held at the Jewish Memorial Chapel in Clifton, N.J.

She is survived by her children, Marty, Francie and Joe, and her grandchildren, Robin and Jeffrey.