Estelle Getty suffered from crippling stage fright

Estelle Getty was 60 years old before she got her big break as an actress in a Broadway play and two years later she got the role of Sophia in 'The Golden Girls'.

But she suffered from stage fright that affected her so badly that she struggled to relax in front of the camera. Rue McClanahan (Blanche) explained: "She would start getting under a dark cloud the day before tape day ... You could see a big difference in her that day. She'd be walking around like Pigpen under a black cloud. By tape day, she was unreachable. She was just as uptight as a human being could get. When your brain is frozen like that, you can't remember lines."