Joanne Linville

Joanne Linville (January 15, 1928 – June 20, 2021) was an American actress born in Bakersfield, California. She attended high school in Long Beach, California, and worked as an oral surgeon's assistant before pursuing a career in acting. While studying under Stella Adler, Linville danced professionally to cover her tuition costs.

Before establishing herself as an actress, Linville took on a range of early television roles. In 1959, she appeared on the CBS daytime drama The Guiding Light as Amy Sinclair, a runaway drug addict whose daughter becomes entangled in an illegal adoption scheme. That same year she appeared in the One Step Beyond episode "The Dead Part of the House" as Aunt Mina, and returned to the series in 1960 to play Karen Wadsworth in "A Moment of Hate." In 1961, she appeared in the Twilight Zone episode "The Passersby" and in the second episode of The Defenders alongside William Shatner.

Linville's Broadway career included the 1961 production of Daughter of Silence, in which she portrayed the character Valeria. That same year marked a period of significant activity across both stage and television.

Her most celebrated screen performance came in 1968, when she guest-starred in the Star Trek episode "The Enterprise Incident" as an unnamed Romulan commander, a character retroactively named Liviana Charvanek in printed materials. The role brought Linville cult recognition and remains the performance most closely associated with her name. Her daughter, Amy Rydell, later reprised the role in episodes 10 and 11 of the fan production Star Trek Continues.

Linville's film credits include The Goddess (1958), Scorpio (1973), Gable and Lombard (1976), A Star Is Born (1976), The Seduction (1982), and James Dean (2001), in which she played gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. That film was directed by her former husband Mark Rydell, who also appeared in it as Jack L. Warner. Linville and Rydell were married from 1962 until their divorce in 1973 and had two children together, Amy and Christopher, both of whom became actors.

Her television work spanned decades and included appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, Bonanza, I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Columbo: Candidate for Crime, Dynasty, and L.A. Law, among many others. She also appeared in several made-for-television films, including House on Greenapple Road (1970), Secrets (1977), The Critical List (1978), The Users (1978), and The Right of the People (1986). Linville and George Grizzard starred together in "I Kiss Your Shadow," the final episode of the television series Bus Stop.

Linville retired from acting in the 1980s to focus on teaching. Beginning in 1985, she taught a course called "The Power of Language" at the Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles. Among her students was actor Mark Ruffalo, who credited her as a formative influence. Linville died on June 20, 2021, at the age of 93.