Actress and director Penny Marshall dead at 75

Pioneering film director and actress Penny Marshall has died at the age of 75.

Marshall, who played an endearingly graceless character with a thick Bronx accent in US television's Laverne & Shirley before becoming a director - with hits including Big and A League of Their Own – died from complications of diabetes.

She passed away on Monday at her home in the Hollywood Hills.

Marshall played the unrefined but lovable Laverne DeFazio on Laverne & Shirley, a sit com that ran on the ABC network from 1976 to 1983, following the lives of two single women and their nutty friends in 1950s and '60s Milwaukee.

Marshall, known for her bluntness, described the success of the series this way: "We dared to be stupid."

Marshall, the younger sister of successful TV and film director and producer Garry Marshall, turned to directing after her series ended.

Her first film was the underwhelming 1986 Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash, but that was followed by the charming 1988 hit Big, starring Tom Hanks, her fellow former TV sitcom star.

Hanks delivered a great performance in the wistful comedy as a 12-year-old boy whose wish to become an adult is magically granted. The film is known for its classic scene in which Hanks and Robert Loggia play duets by dancing on a toy store's foot-operated electronic keyboard.

The success of Big made Marshall the first woman to direct a film that made more than $100 million at the US box office.

The 1992 women's baseball comedy A League of Their Own made her the first woman to direct two films topping $100 million at the US box office.