Jennifer Runyon, the actress who brought warmth and comedic timing to beloved 1980s properties including Ghostbusters and Charles in Charge, has died at age 65.

Runyon played Cindy in the original Ghostbusters, the student who gets hit on by Bill Murray's Dr. Peter Venkman during his hilariously unethical ESP experiments. It's a small role, but she nailed the comic timing—playing straight woman to Murray's chaos with exactly the right mix of confusion and annoyance.

In Charles in Charge, she was a series regular during the show's first season, part of the ensemble that made the sitcom a cable TV staple throughout the late '80s and '90s. According to Variety, her television work extended across dozens of shows during a prolific period of guest appearances.

What made Runyon memorable wasn't star power—she never became a household name. It was reliability. Watch her work and you see an actress who understood the assignment: support the stars, nail the timing, make the scene work. It's the kind of professionalism that holds entire productions together.

She appeared in The Falcon and the Snowman, Up the Creek, and Carnosaur, bouncing between prestige dramas and B-movie schlock with the ease of a working actor who understood that work is work. She did soap operas (Days of Our Lives), crime procedurals (Murder, She Wrote), and sitcoms (Different Strokes).

In an industry obsessed with fame, Runyon represented something arguably more admirable: longevity. She worked consistently across two decades in an era when women's careers often evaporated after 40. She showed up, did the job, and helped create moments that became part of pop culture's collective memory.

When Ghostbusters became a phenomenon, Runyon's scene became iconic—not because of her, but she was there, part of the magic. That's no small thing.

She leaves behind a body of work that reflects the texture of 1980s film and television—an era when character actors could build careers on talent and professionalism rather than social media followings and franchise tentpoles.

Rest in peace to a reliable pro.