
Age: 78
female
Elizabeth Larrieu Torres (born September 27, 1947) is an American actress, singer, and comedian. Torres is best known for her role as Mahalia Sanchez in the NBC comedy series The John Larroquette Show (1993–1996), for which she received two Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations. She is also known for her role as Patricia "Miss Patty" LaCosta in The WB family comedic drama series Amy Sherman-Palladino's Gilmore Girls (2000–07) starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. In the 1970s, she played Julie Erskine on Phyllis and also had a recurring role as Teresa Betancourt on All in the Family. Description above from the Wikipedia article Liz Torres, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character—a “difficult” woman. By no means is she conventionally “nice,” but she will never be forgotten. Ruth’s story is told in three parts, each focusing on a critical time in her life. When we first meet her—on Long Island, in the summer of 1958—Ruth is only four. The second window into Ruth’s life opens on the fall of 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason. A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She’s about to fall in love for the first time. Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing, A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.
