Beloved Television Actress Valerie Harper Has Fallen Into a Coma After

A source close to the family previously told ET that Harper’s family said privately she is in a coma.

Harper has continued to work throughout her illness. It did not provide further information about her illness.

Playhouse officials said Harper, who has battled cancer, was taken to a local hospital Wednesday, July 29, 2015, before the evening performance of?Nice Work If You Can Get It.?

Harper’s understudy is now filling in for her at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, who also released a statement wishing her well. At approximately 8:56 p.m., the fire department arrived to find Valerie unconscious. “She is now enjoying her family’s company while resting at an undisclosed location”, the statement read.

Harper has been performing in the production as Millicent Winter, along with Sally Struthers as Duchess Estonia Dulworth. She famously said:

“I really want Americans, and all of us, to be less afraid of death, and know that it’s a passage, but that – don’t go to the funeral before the day of the funeral.”

We’re all terminal; none of us are getting out of this alive”. “So I am cancer free from the neck down, so far”.

Harper, a lung cancer survivor, announced March 6, 2013, that she had been diagnosed with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare, terminal cancer. The doctors expected her to die before the year was up, but she didn’t take that diagnosis and give up. She’s well-known for her position as Rhoda Morgenstern on “The Mary Tyler Moore Present”. In 2010, she returned to Broadway to star as actress Tallulah Bankhead in the play Looped, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress.