Pettet, friends with Sharon Tate, lunched with the actress earlier on the day she was killed in the Manson murders
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NEED TO KNOW
- Former actress Joanna Pettet has died
- The British and Canadian star was known for her New York theater work and starring in The Group, Casino Royale and Blue
- She was 83 when she died on June 7 of unknown causes
Joanna Pettet, the retired actress known for starring in The Group and Casino Royale, died on Tuesday, July 7. The British and Canadian star was 83. A cause of death has yet to be announced.
Pettet’s friend and former manager Pam DuBois told The Hollywood Reporter that she died at California’s Temecula Valley Hospital. In a Wednesday, July 8, Facebook post, DuBois noted that Pettet died 31 years to the day after the loss of her 26-year-old son Damien Cord, whom she shared with Airwolf star Alex Cord (her husband from 1968 to 1989). Damien died in 1995 of a heroin overdose.
“We all loved Jo- But there was one person who loved her more. And yesterday on the 31st anniversary of his death. Damien Zach took his mother to heaven and there she will stay with him forever,” wrote DuBois.
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Born in London in 1942 and raised in Montreal after her father was killed in WWII, Pettet moved to New York City at age 16 and studied acting. After starring in three Broadway comedies in the early 1960s, she made the jump from theater to film in 1966’s Sidney Lumet-directed The Group, about eight Vassar graduates, costarring Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett and Jessica Walter.
The following year she made a splash in three films: The Night of the Generals, Robbery and Casino Royale. In the latter, a spy parody James Bond film, Pettet played the scantily clad Mata Bond, daughter of Bond (David Niven) and Mata Hari. She also played Terence Stamp‘s love interest in the 1968 Western film Blue.
On Aug. 8, 1969, Pettet joined actress Sharon Tate for lunch just hours before Tate and four others were murdered by members of the Manson family. In Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 quasi-biopic Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Pettet was portrayed onscreen by Rumer Willis.
Pettet became a regular on TV shows in the 1970s and ‘80s, including Night Gallery, Captains and the Kings, Fantasy Island and Knots Landing. In 1984, she played herself in an episode of action series The Fall Guy as part of its James Bond tribute.
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In 2021, Extra reported that Pettet was pinned under a boulder in a freak accident, later undergoing surgery to replace her shoulder and rotator cuff.
The actress’ last onscreen credit was 1990’s Terror in Paradise, after which she retired from acting.
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According to Deadline, outside of her marriage to Cord, Pettet was romantically linked to actors Stamp and Alan Bates. She rekindled her relationship with the latter, her costar in Broadway’s Poor Richard, in 2002. When Bates died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he left her an inheritance.
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