Joanna Pettet, Actress in ‘The Group’ and ‘Casino Royale,’ Dies at 83
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Joanna Pettet, the London-born actress best known for Sidney Lumet's ensemble drama The Group and the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale, has died at the age of 83. She died on Tuesday at Temecula Valley Hospital in California, according to her friend and former manager Pam DuBois. Her death fell exactly 31 years after her son, Damien Cord, died of a heroin overdose at the age of 26 in 1995.
Born Joanna Jane Salmon in London on 16 November 1942, she moved to New York at 16 after her RAF pilot father was killed in the Second World War and her mother resettled in Montreal. She trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse, made her Broadway debut in the early 1960s, and went on to roles in films including The Night of the Generals (1967), Robbery (1967) and Blue (1968), as well as television work on Night Gallery and Knots Landing. Pettet was also among those who lunched at Sharon Tate's home hours before the Manson murders on 8 August 1969, an episode re-created in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
- Actress Joanna Pettet, of The Group and Casino Royale, has died aged 83.
- She died in California, 31 years to the day after her son's death.
- Her career spanned Broadway, 1960s films and television.
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Joanna Pettet was a British-born actress who worked mainly in American film, television and theatre from the 1960s onwards. She trained in New York and built her career on Broadway before moving into cinema, becoming best known for the ensemble drama The Group and the comic Bond film Casino Royale, alongside a long list of television roles over the following decades.
Beyond her screen work, Pettet was linked to one of the most notorious episodes in modern American history: she was among the guests who had lunch with actress Sharon Tate on the day, in August 1969, that Tate and others were murdered by followers of Charles Manson. That connection has kept her name tied to accounts of the killings, including their dramatisation in a recent major film.
Her life was also marked by personal tragedy, including the death of her son from a drug overdose in the mid-1990s. This background helps explain why her death is being reported not only as the loss of a working actress with notable film credits, but as one of the last living links to a defining moment in Hollywood's history.
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Originally published by The Hollywood Reporter as “Joanna Pettet, Actress in ‘The Group’ and ‘Casino Royale,’ Dies at 83”.