Emmy-winning actress Mary Tyler Moore, who brightened American television screens as the perky suburban housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show and then as a fledgling feminist on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died at the age of 80, a representative says.

Moore, who won seven Emmy Awards for her television work, died on Wednesday in the company of friends and her husband, Dr S Robert Levine, representative Mara Buxbaum said in a statement.

Moore also was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1981 film Ordinary People, playing a character very different from her TV roles - an icy woman coping with a suicide attempt by her 18-year-old son.

 Moore's eponymous show and The Dick Van Dyke Show were both among the most popular sitcoms of their time, with the former ranking seventh and the latter No. 20 on TV Guide's 2013 list of best television shows.

Moore had emerged on television in the early 1960s when many of the women in leading roles were traditional, apron-wearing stay-at-home moms like June Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver.

Moore's bright-eyed Laura Petrie character was prone to moaning "Oh, Rob!" at her husband in moments of exasperation on The Dick Van Dyke Show, but she chipped away at that stereotype

For one thing, she wore stylish pants rather than house dresses and styled her hair like Jacqueline Kennedy's.