Linda Lavin, who died Sunday at age 87, was a fascinating Broadway star who was beloved by audiences for his electrifying contradictions.

For six decades, the Tony Award-winning actress was a celebrated fixture on the New York stage. maternal and volcanic; sparklingly musical and down-to-earth real; hilarious and heartbreaking.

Her sardonic punch line could be followed a second later by a sharp punch in the stomach.

“She was multiple women in one fragile body,” playwright Charles Busch, whose 2000 Broadway play “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” starred Lavin, told The Post.

“To conjure up such sharp wit, such comic ingenuity and such intense emotion, she had to be a woman of great complexity.”

That was her. And one with breathtaking range.

Dramas, comedies, plays, musicals – Lavin has masterfully executed it all with a skill and confidence that few can match.

Yes, Lavin played a lot of mothers. But from the fame-hungry Mama Rose in the 1989 revival of Gypsy, in which she replaced Tyne Daly, to the mysterious lead role in her last Broadway show, Richard Greenberg’s 2016 Our Mother’s Brief Affair, she could the roles couldn’t have been more different.

Lavin won the 1987 Tony Award for best actress in a play for playing another mother, Kate Jerome, in “Broadway Bound,” the final chapter of Neil Simon’s Eugene trilogy.

Kate’s life is hard. Her sons, played by Jonathan Silverman and Jason Alexander, are about to leave her, her husband is cheating on her and her father is getting old.

Kate’s speech to her wandering spouse is full of pain.

“I’m so angry,” she tells him. “Your selfishness hurts me so much.”

However, Lavin was never satisfied with just one adjective. In critic Clive Barnes’ review in The Post, he called her “a delight.”

And the Times’ Frank Rich understood the Olympic balancing act that the star had triumphantly mastered – and would continue to do so throughout his career.

“One only wishes that Ms. Lavin, whose touching performance is of the same high integrity as the writing, could remain in the role forever,” he wrote. “It’s all too easy to imagine what broad interpretations might follow this actress’s meticulously and deeply engraved portrait of a woman.”

Silverman, who played Eugene, told The Post he was “so lucky” to have been Lavin’s fictional son.

“I had the privilege of dancing and acting in Neil Simon’s ‘Broadway Bound’ opposite the brilliant and beautiful Linda Lavin eight times a week for a year,” said the actor.

“I was barely 20 years old back then. I had maybe two or three credits to my name. She took me under her wing and we were on a roll,” Silverman continued. “I had a front row seat to witness her breathtaking, Tony Award-winning performance night after night. It was heartbreaking and breathtaking. Every time. Every show.”

On social media, “Seinfeld’s” Alexander wrote: “The talent was immense. The heart even bigger.”

Lavin created roles in plays by the greatest comedy minds of the last half century: Simon, Busch, John Guare and Paul Rudnick, among others. Her words flowed out of her as if they were her own.

Rudnick, whose 2008 “The New Century” starred Lavin, said she was “a writer’s dream.”

“She was incredibly funny and deeply emotional,” Rudnick told The Post. “Watching her put together a performance was a masterclass and the audience adored her. She was a wonderfully accessible legend.”

Speaking of adoration: the actress’s friends and colleagues repeatedly mentioned the great affection from theatergoers that she regularly aroused. The name Linda Lavin was of paramount importance to discerning Broadway ticket buyers.

“As I sat in the back of the house as the show began, I marveled at how the audience adored her and her,” said Manhattan Theater Club artistic director Lynne Meadow, who she portrayed in “Allergist’s Wife,” Letter Affair” and “Collected” staged stories.”

“Linda was both a comedic and dramatic genius,” she added. “Smart, intuitive, with limitless energy. I called her ‘the Energizer Bunny’.”

Although her later career was marked by straight-ahead plays, “Gypsy” wasn’t Lavin’s only foray into singing.

An early breakout role was as Sydney in the 1966 Alvin Theater (later Neil Simon) musical It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman.

And after starring in Simon’s “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers” on Broadway in 1969, the actress struggled to find work. So she traveled west to LA and performed in cabarets.

“Nobody knew who I was,” Lavin told the Post in 2011. “The club put a sign in the window – ‘Linda Lawn.'” I sang all the sad songs. I sang ‘I’m Still Here’ for people who didn’t know who I was.”

She eventually found success again on Broadway (and television), but continued to sing on stage, primarily with her friend and musical director Billy Stritch.

“Linda was an angel in my life and like a sister to me,” Stritch told The Post.

“Much has been said about her extraordinary acting talent, but I was fortunate to know her best through her music.” Linda and I spent nearly twenty years performing together on cabaret and concert stages around the world, and every moment was pure joy. We were constantly laughing and she was always full of musical ideas and great concepts and no one had a better ear for harmony and improvisation.”

Backstage, Lavin, who married three times, finally found love with husband Steve Bakunas in 2005.

“I saw those beautiful blue eyes and thought, ‘Wow! “I’m glad I got my hair done,” she told The Post in 2011.

The couple’s close friend, Broadway producer Robyn Goodman, said Lavin and Bakunas also took up a hobby that one of the actress’ urban characters might enjoy: house flipping.

“She loved buying and selling real estate with her husband, Steve, who was brilliant at rebuilding things with her and making them beautiful,” said Goodman, who first met Lavin on a plane in the 1970s. During the flight, “we laughed as we ravaged our husbands the whole way.”

Decades later, the couple spent the weekend upstate with Goodman and her wife, designer Anna Louizos.

“She visited us in the country once,” Goodman said. “She left on a Sunday and bought a new house nearby on Tuesday!”