Opinion | What Linda Lavin Whispered to Me About Love and Need

“I thought getting attention was the same thing as getting love,” the actress Linda Lavin told me in a hushed whisper in 2012, recalling performing for her family as a child, during one of our interviews when I was the Times theater reporter.She was radiant on Broadway and off then, in some of my favorite plays — Jon Robin Baitz’s “Other Desert Cities,” Nicky Silver’s “The Lyons” and Donald Margulies’s “Collected Stories.”Lavin died on Monday and I’ve been thinking about her all week — but really, thinking about that comment about getting attention/getting love.

I grew up in the 1970s watching her in the CBS sitcom “Alice,” playing a single mother who was a waitress at Mel’s Diner.Her character was unflappable and confident, but I remember that she wasn’t as colorful or funny as the other waitresses in the diner, like Flo and Vera, and maybe not as beloved.

Her humor came more from playing it dry, straight, with great timing and just the right tone — even an “uh-huh” aimed at her son, Tommy, or her boss, Mel, could get a laugh.I loved “Alice,” but I didn’t necessarily love Alice.During that 2012 interview, Lavin suggested to me that she knew she wasn’t always lovable.

She had demons.She had high expectations for other people and for herself — those expectations seemed as if they came with a lot of pressure, including pressure she put on herself.

She talked about her clash with some of her colleagues on the play “Other Desert Cities” — how she wanted to portray her character, a recovering alcoholic, as sober through the end of the play.Some colleagues had differing views on her choice, but she was firm, drawing on her own sobriety as a North Star for the character no matter what the play said.Lavin ultimately left “Other Desert Cities” before it moved to Broadway; another favorite actress of mine, Judith Light, took over the role and subsequently won a Tony Award for her performance.

Lavin starred ins...