Elmarie Wendel, who played landlady Mrs Dubcek in the US comedy ‘3rd Rock From the Sun’ has died at the age of 89.

Her cause of death is not yet known.

The American actress’s death was confirmed by her daughter Jennifer Wendel in an Instagram post shared on Sunday.

Jennifer posted a picture of her mother with the rest of the ‘Third Rock From The Sun’ cast, which she captioned: “#ripelmariewendel you were a great mom and a badass dame.”

Jim Beaver, who starred alongside Elmarie on the show as Happy Doug, was one of the first stars to pay his respects.

He tweeted: “I’ve just heard from her daughter J.C. that my friend and colleague from 3rd Rock From the Sun, Elmarie Wendel, has died. She was raucous, funny, endearing and terribly, terribly sweet. Goodnight, Mrs. Dubcek, wherever you are.”

As well as ‘3rd Rock’, Elmarie enjoyed a successful stint on Broadway in her early career before moving into television, appearing in a string of hit shows including ‘Murder She Wrote’, ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘Seinfeld’

But her biggest role was playing eccentric landlady Mrs Dubcek to the alien Solomon family in ‘3rd Rock’

The sci-fi sitcom – which looked at human behaviour from the perspective of aliens – ran for six seasons on NBC from 1996 to 2001.

She appeared in more than 90 episodes of the show’s 136 episode run.