The two most memorable characters played by the actor Kathryn Joosten, who has died of lung cancer aged 72, were crotchety and sometimes cranky, but ultimately lovable. Joosten came to prominence playing Dolores Landingham, the gruff and protective secretary to President Jed Bartlet, in The West Wing, but her character died in a car crash towards the end of the second season. She then moved on to Desperate Housewives, in which, as Karen McCluskey, she observed her neighbours in Wisteria Lane with a sharp eye and gossipy tongue, winning Emmy awards in 2005 and 2008. Last month, as Desperate Housewives reached the end of its eight-year run on the ABC network in America, McCluskey's death was the centrepiece of the final show.
Joosten was born in Eustis, Florida, and worked as a psychiatric nurse with disturbed teenagers in Chicago. She married a psychiatrist and began to raise their two sons, Jonathan and Timothy, in suburban Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1980 she and her husband divorced and Joosten began a new career, inspired by what her mother had told her was her greatest regret in life – not pursuing her dreams.
Joosten began taking acting classes at the Steppenwolf theatre company, while supporting her family by hanging wallpaper and painting houses, and using those houses as a location scout for films and magazines. In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the author Dave Eggers wrote that Joosten hung paper in his bedroom when he was a child.
She advanced into semi-professional theatre, and had a few bit parts in films and TV series produced around Chicago. In 1992 she went to an open audition for performers at Disney World, was offered a job, and moved to Orlando. When that gig ended, she again acted in the theatre and had odd jobs such as bartending.
In 1995 she moved to Los Angeles, and five months later landed a part in the comedy series Family Matters. She began working regularly, in further comedies such as Murphy Brown, Frasier and The Drew Carey Show, dramas including NYPD Blue and ER, and commercials. In 1999 she had a regular part as Mrs Sturges in the short-lived series Thanks, and was hired for The West Wing.
In 2001 she appeared in Scrubs, as a woman coming to terms with death; the episode, entitled My Old Lady, won a Humanitas prize for screenwriting. That year, Joosten underwent her first operation for lung cancer. She became a regular on the comedy Dharma & Greg and continued to be an in-demand character actor, joining the cast of Joan of Arcadia, a series about a teenaged girl to whom God speaks directly. She had a recurring role in the daytime soap opera General Hospital and parts in the films Wedding Crashers, Hostage, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
She became active in lung cancer charity work and anti-smoking campaigns, playing characters who were trying to quit the habit in the series My Name Is Earl and Grey's Anatomy.
In 2009, as discussions for a Desperate Housewives spin-off, to star Joosten and Lily Tomlin, were under way, her cancer recurred, requiring more surgery and extensive chemotherapy. A battle with lung cancer then became part of McCluskey's story on the show. In 2011, Joosten appeared on the 6,000th episode of the daytime soap The Bold and the Beautiful, discussing her life with two of the programme's actors, who had also suffered from cancer.
"Some people in Hollywood think of me as a model for dramatic midlife transitions: suburban housewife to Emmy-winning actress," Joosten wrote on her website, "but I never plotted a master plan for following my dreams."
She is survived by her sons.