American actress Suzanne Pleshette, best known for playing Emily Hartley on "The Bob Newhart Show" in the 1970s, passed away in her Los Angeles home.

The glamorous movie and theater star, whose career included roles in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and in Broadway plays including "The Miracle Worker," died of respiratory failure on Saturday, lawyer and family friend Robert Finkelstein told Associated Press.  The 70-year-old actress underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.

"I'm cancer-free, my (breasts) are great and ... I'm extremely, extremely rich," Pleshette replied a question from The Associated Press, generating howls of laughter from a packed audience during a rare public appearance in September last year for the 35th-anniversary tribute to "The Bob Newhart Show," her most enduring work.

During its successful six-year run, "The Bob Newhart Show, starring comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients, found Pleshette providing the voice of reason.

Born in 1937, the stage-trained New York actress made her movie debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy," and later appeared in such films as "Nevada Smith," "Youngblood Hawke," "A Rage to Live" and "Fate Is the Hunter."

"When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."

Pleshette retired from acting after marrying her second husband, wealthy businessman Tom Gallagher, in 1968. She told TV Guide in 1972 that after she'd been hanging around the house for six months, "my loving husband said, 'You're getting to be awfully boring. Go back to work.' "

In recent years, the actress made several appearances in episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."
In a 1999 interview, Pleshette observed that being an actress was more important than being a star.

"I'm an actress, and that's why I'm still here," she said. "Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves."