Maria O’Brien, the actress and long-serving acting coach best known for her 15-year tenure on Days of Our Lives and appearances in films including Protocol and Smile, has died at the age of 75. 

She passed away on 24th February, though the cause of death was not revealed.

Born on 14th August 1950 in Los Angeles, O’Brien came from genuine Hollywood royalty. 

Her father, Edmond O’Brien, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in 1954’s The Barefoot Contessa, while her mother, Olga San Juan, was a musical comedy star who appeared in a string of films including Are You with It? and One Touch of Venus. 

Maria followed them into the industry, landing her first onscreen credit in 1963 on the TV series Sam Benedict.

Over a career spanning six decades, she built up an impressive body of work across both film and television. 

Her screen credits included The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Table for Five, and the 1984 Goldie Hawn comedy Protocol, and she made guest appearances on some of the most popular series of the 1980s and 90s, among them Magnum P.I., Murder She Wrote, L.A. Law, Matlock, CHiPs, and The Love Boat. 

Along the way she shared scenes with Angela Lansbury, Lily Tomlin, Tom Selleck, Melanie Griffith, and Goldie Hawn. 

She also won a Drama-Logue award in 1990 for her performance in Jean Genet’s The Maids at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

In the late 1990s, O’Brien moved into coaching, joining the daytime dramas Sunset Beach and Passions before taking up her long-running position as acting coach on Days of Our Lives, a role she held until her retirement in 2022.

Away from the screen, she was a passionate advocate for Alzheimer’s research. 

Her father had been among the first celebrities to be publicly diagnosed with the disease, and in 1983 O’Brien testified before Congress about its devastating impact. 

Her advocacy played a meaningful role in securing government funding for research into the condition.

She is survived by her three children, Thomas, Danica, and Sean Anderson, and her sister Bridget O’Brien Adelman.

Zara Larsson has gone viral after leaving a cheeky comment on a fan’s TikTok video, and the internet has had a lot to say about it.

The 28-year-old Swedish singer was tagged in a post by TikTok user @lattegirl, who shared footage of herself at one of Larsson’s recent concerts watching the singer perform Midnight Sun. 

The text on the video read: “i didn’t know i was pregnant here but at least my baby got to hear midnight sun before I aborted it.”

Larsson spotted the tag and jumped straight into the comments with a response that was equal parts cheeky and deadpan: “I killed the performance and then you killed it after the performance purrrrrr.”

She then reposted the video to her own TikTok account, which sent the exchange into overdrive online.

Screenshots of her comment spread rapidly across platforms, igniting debate about celebrity responsibility, edgy humour, and where the line sits when it comes to joking about this topic. 

On Reddit, fans of the singer were largely amused. 

“She’s so funny for that idc,” wrote one user. Another added, “This makes me love her more,” while a third offered some context for newer followers: “Zara has always been like this looool can the new fans catch up on her lore.”

Larsson has not elaborated on the exchange or addressed the wider reaction beyond her initial comment and repost.

Keke Palmer and Demi Lovato have opened up about their experiences dating significantly older men as teenagers, with both reflecting on how those relationships look very different through adult eyes.

The candid conversation took place on the 3rd March episode of Palmer’s Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast, where the two former child stars bonded over shared experiences growing up in the spotlight. 

It was Palmer, 32, who kicked things off with a question that stopped the conversation in its tracks. “I’m fifteen, why was my boyfriend 20?” she said, before Lovato, 33, quietly added: “Why was my boyfriend 30?”

The admission visibly struck Palmer. 

“Girl, damn,” she said. “I’m not smiling at that but that is real. We were trying to find outlets, though, and just a way to process this.” 

She went on to describe the unsettling realisation that comes with getting older and understanding what was actually happening at the time.

“The moment when you realise and you get [to] the age of a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff,” she said, “it’s almost a mental break that can happen because you realise, ‘You were taking advantage. Oh, I was being exploited.'”

Both women spoke about how their early careers created a warped sense of maturity that made those relationships feel normal at the time. 

“That was very difficult for me because at 15 I’m thinking like, ‘My boyfriend’s older because I’m doing an older job. And I’m doing a bunch of things and this is the way that it is,'” Palmer explained. 

“And it seemed normal in my mind.” Lovato agreed, noting that it felt especially justified if you were considered “an older soul” or told you were “mature for your age.”

That phrase, “mature for your age”, became a thread running through the conversation. 

Palmer praised fellow former child star Hilary Duff for addressing the same experience in her 2025 song Mature, saying, “Yeah, because it’s like ‘oh s–t, we all had the same damn life.’ You know what I mean, where people kept telling us ‘You’re so mature for your age.'”

Lovato pointed Palmer towards her own 2022 song 29, which grapples with the same territory. 

“I also wrote a song about that,” she said. 

“It’s called 29 and when you listen to it I think you’ll be able to relate to it.” 

Lovato has not publicly named who the song is about, though she dated actor Wilmer Valderrama for six years before their split in 2016. Valderrama is now 46.

Palmer has previously spoken about an “inappropriate” relationship with an older man during her time starring on True Jackson, VP. She shares son Leo, three, with ex Darius Jackson. Lovato married Jordan “Jutes” Lutes in May.