Considering the length and success of Betty White's acting career, it's somewhat surprising that Betty White has fallen into the typecasting trap decades after first finding fame.

Many actors get stuck being identified with their first major role if it's successful enough and spend years trying to break the attachment. But when Betty White's career-swallowing role as Rose Nylund on the beloved and long-running sitcom "The Golden Girls" came along, she was already an established star - she'd already starred in "The Betty White Show" for crying out loud.

"Life With Elizabeth" was one of those shows now lost in the shadows of her later success. Airing for two seasons way back in the early days of TV, from 1952 to 1955, it starred White as a housewife in the now tried-and-true family-sitcom setting, which at the time was still a new idea.

White landed an Emmy for the role, and became a bona fide TV star.

She tried the sitcom format out again a few years later on "Date With the Angels," again a family sitcom, but this one about a pair of newlyweds who drag their friends and neighbors into all sorts of hijinx.

Other roles soon followed, the next notable one being Sue Ann Nivens on the classic "Mary Tyler Moore Show," which she played in from 1973 to 1977.

She started out the '80s with a recurring role on another long-running sitcom, "Mama's Family," which was also notable for teaming White with another future Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan.

She's of course starred in plenty of other series since "The Golden Girls" signed off in 1992, many either referencing her Rose Nylund character directly - most notably in her Emmy-winning turn in an episode of "The John Laroquette Show" where she played herself going through a "Sunset Boulevard"-esque career crisis - or being shades of it - witness her slightly batty grandmother in last year's big-screen hit "The Proposal."

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