Betty White
Betty WhiteREUTERS/Phil McCarten/File Photo

American actress Betty White passed away on Friday at the age of 99, just 17 days before her 100th birthday.

"Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever," her agent and close friend Jeff Witjas told PEOPLE magazine in a statement.

"I will miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don't think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again," he added.

White was gearing up to celebrate her 100th birthday on January 17. She had been inviting her fans to purchase tickets for a movie special premiering in theaters for one day only on her birthday.

Earlier this year, White opened up to PEOPLE about how she was feeling about turning 100 years old.

"I'm so lucky to be in such good health and feel so good at this age," said the veteran actress. "It's amazing."

According to White, being "born a cockeyed optimist" was the key to her upbeat nature. "I got it from my mom, and that never changed," she said. "I always find the positive."

She also cracked a joke about the secret to her long life, telling PEOPLE, "I try to avoid anything green. I think it's working."

Born January 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, White moved with her parents, traveling salesman and electrical engineer Horace White and homemaker Tess Curts White, to Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

As a child, she fantasized about becoming a forest ranger or a writer, only to fall in love with performing when she took the lead in the high-school senior play that she wrote. She skipped college, but before launching an acting career she married twice: first to Dick Barker, a WWII pilot she wed in 1945 and then in 1947 to agent Lane Allen. That marriage ended in 1949.

White’s television career spanned over nine decades and she had worked longer in that medium than anyone else in the television industry, earning her a Guinness World Record in 2018.

She won eight Emmy Awards in various categories, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award.

In 1973, White made several appearances in the fourth season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Sue Ann Nivens. She may best be remembered for the popular sitcom The Golden Girls, which aired in the 1980s and in which she played Rose Nylund for seven seasons. At the time of her passing, White was the last “Golden Girl” still alive.

In 2010, at age 87, White enjoyed an award-laden resurgence, when, after starring on a Snickers commercial during the Super Bowl, polls and petitions overwhelmingly named her the public's choice to host Saturday Night Live, emcee various awards shows and even be a sergeant's date at a Marine Corps ball.

In May 2012 she debuted on the NBC comedy reality show Betty White's Off Their Rockers.

In 1961, White appeared as a celebrity player on the daytime game show Password, hosted by Allen Ludden, whom she married. Ludden died of stomach cancer in 1981 at the age of 63.

(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)