NEW YORK – American actress Lisa Loring, who played the child character Wednesday Addams in the original The Addams Family television series in the 1960s, has died. She was 64.

Her death from a stroke, reported by American media, comes a few months after the release of Netflix’s spin-off show Wednesday (2022 to present), starring American actress Jenna Ortega and directed by Tim Burton.

Loring passed away on Saturday surrounded by her family, her long-time agent Chris Carbaugh told CNN in a statement on Monday.

He said: “She brought to life one of the most iconic characters in Hollywood history that is still celebrated today.”

Producer Laurie Jacobson, a close friend of Loring, wrote in a Facebook post that the actress had “suffered a massive stroke brought on by smoking and high blood pressure”.

Loring had been on life support for three days before her family “made the difficult decision to remove it”, she wrote.

“She is embedded in the tapestry that is pop culture and in our hearts always as Wednesday Addams,” Jacobson added.

Born Lisa Ann DeCinces in 1958 in the Marshall Islands, Loring was cast as the pigtailed Wednesday in 1964.

It would be her most famous role and set the standard for subsequent portrayals of the character.

American actress Christina Ricci took up the mantle in the 1991 film The Addams Family before Ortega’s turn as the title character in Netflix’s Wednesday. AFP