Joanna Pettet

Joanna Pettet, born Joanna Jane Salmon on 16 November 1942 in London, England, is a Canadian and English former actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television. Her father, Harold Nigel Egerton Salmon, was a British Royal Air Force pilot killed in the Second World War in 1943. Following the war, her mother remarried and the family relocated to Montréal, where Pettet was adopted by her stepfather and took the surname Pettet. At age 16, she moved to New York City, where she trained with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and also studied at the Lincoln Center.

Pettet made her Broadway debut at age 19 in Take Her, She's Mine, which ran from 21 December 1961 to 8 December 1962. Her Broadway work between 1961 and 1964 also included The Chinese Prime Minister and Poor Richard. For her performance in Poor Richard, she received a Theatre World Award for the 1964–1965 season.

Her television career began in 1964 with an episode of Route 66, after which she made guest appearances on a number of American dramatic series including The Doctors, The Nurses, The Trials of O'Brien, The Fugitive, A Man Called Shenandoah, and Dr. Kildare. Her film career was launched by her role in Sidney Buchman's 1966 adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel The Group. Subsequent film credits included The Night of the Generals (1967), the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967), in which she played Mata Bond, Peter Yates's Robbery (1967) opposite Stanley Baker, Blue (1968) with Terence Stamp, and the Victorian period comedy The Best House in London (1969).

Through the 1970s, Pettet's feature film work included roles in the cult horror films Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974) and The Evil (1978). During the same period she starred in more than a dozen television movies, among them The Weekend Nun (1972), Footsteps (1972), Pioneer Woman (1973), A Cry in the Wilderness (1974), The Desperate Miles (1975), The Hancocks (1976), Sex and the Married Woman (1977), Cry of the Innocent (1980) with Rod Taylor, and The Return of Frank Cannon (1980). She also starred in the NBC miniseries Captains and the Kings (1976) and appeared in the 1977 NBC anthology series Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected. Pettet guest-starred four times on Rod Serling's Night Gallery, including an episode alongside her then-husband Alex Cord, and appeared in two episodes of the Brian Clemens anthology series Thriller in the United Kingdom. She had recurring appearances on both Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, each three times, and held a recurring role on Knots Landing in 1983 as Janet Baines, an LAPD homicide detective investigating the murder of singer Ciji Dunne, played by Lisa Hartman. Additional television credits across the 1970s and 1980s included Harry O, Banacek, McCloud, Mannix, Police Woman, Knight Rider, and Murder, She Wrote. In 1984, she appeared as herself in a James Bond tribute episode of The Fall Guy alongside Britt Ekland and Lana Wood. Her final acting role came in the 1990 thriller Terror in Paradise, after which she retired from the profession while still in her 40s.

On 8 August 1969, Pettet had lunch at the home of actress Sharon Tate hours before the crimes committed there by members of the Manson Family. This event is depicted in the 2019 film Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood, in which Pettet is portrayed by Rumer Willis. Actor Sir Alan Bates, a friend of Pettet's since 1964, bequeathed her £95,000 upon his death in December 2003, following her support and companionship during his final months after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February 2003. In August 2021, Pettet became trapped under a boulder for three hours in high desert near Anza, California, an incident that required surgery to replace her shoulder and rotator cuff.