Estelle Getty's Age When Golden Girls Started Will Blow Your Mind
When The Golden Girls premiered in 1985, Estelle Getty became an overnight TV icon as Sophia Petrillo — the quick-witted, no-filter Sicilian mother with an endless supply of savage one-liners.
And while most people remember Sophia as the oldest of the bunch, there's a twist that still catches fans off guard:
Estelle Getty was younger than nearly everyone else on the show.
At the time of the series premiere:
- Estelle Getty was 62
- Bea Arthur (Dorothy) was 63
- Betty White (Rose) was 63
- Rue McClanahan (Blanche) was 51
In other words, the actress playing the sharp-tongued elderly mother was actually younger than her on-screen daughter, Bea Arthur.
To make it work, Getty underwent a daily transformation involving heavy makeup, wigs, and costuming designed to age her up by two decades. She reportedly spent 45 minutes in the makeup chair before every shoot, a process she famously hated but endured to stay in character.
Sophia wasn't even supposed to be a regular. She only had a few scenes in the pilot, written as a side character — until test audiences couldn't get enough of her.
Getty's delivery and timing were so sharp that NBC upgraded her to series regular status before the show went to air.
The role became her career-defining moment. Getty would go on to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 1988, and appeared in all 180 episodes of The Golden Girls, plus The Golden Palace spinoff and guest roles on Empty Nest and Nurses.
Offscreen, Getty was known for being shy, stage-fright-prone, and famously anxious before performances — a contrast to her fearless alter ego. But once the cameras rolled, she was all fire.
Years later, in interviews, her castmates often recalled how surreal it was to see Getty — the youngest of the four — playing the matriarch everyone thought was decades older.
As Rue McClanahan once put it, "She was the least experienced and the most nervous, but you'd never know it. Once she was in costume, she became Sophia."
Estelle Getty passed away in 2008 at the age of 84, leaving behind one of the most beloved characters in sitcom history — and a little-known fact that still stuns fans nearly 40 years later.