Penny Marshall Actress and Director of 'Big' Passed Away

Actress and director Penny Marshall, the first woman to raise more than $100 million with a film, died Monday in Los Angeles at age 75, her agent said Tuesday.

Very famous in the Anglo-Saxon world for having played in the series "Laverne & Shirley" in the 1970s, she succumbed to complications related to his diabetes, he said in a statement.

"When Penny directed Tom Hanks in the film Big (1988), she became the first woman in history to make a film that raised more than $ 100 million," says the announcement, recalling that she had reissued the feat four years later with "An Unusual Team", a film about the beginnings of the women's baseball league in the United States with Tom Hanks again.

The actor, who has since become one of the best-known American actors in the world and won two Oscars, quickly responded.

"Goodbye Penny, what we laughed at, if only we could still do it, I love you," he tweeted.

Actress and producer Reese Witherspoon recalled that Penny Marshall had shown "great support" from the beginning of her career, greeting a "funny, talented, good and generous" woman, while the director Ron Howard said he was "lucky to have known her and worked with her".

Penny Marshall has directed many stars, including Geena Davis and Madonna in "An Unusual Team", Robert De Niro and Robin Williams ("The Awakening", 1990), Whoopi Goldberg ("Jumpin 'Jack Flash", 1986).  or Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. She is the one who gave Mark Wahlberg his first role.

In the 1970s, she had been married for a decade with director Rob Reiner, who had adopted her first-born daughter, Tracy Reiner.