Joanna Pettet Dies: ‘The Group’, ‘Casino Royale’, ‘Knots Landing’ Actor Was 83
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- Joanna Pettet died Tuesday, July 7, at age 83, according to a Facebook announcement from friend and former manager Pam DuBois, who noted the death fell on the 31st anniversary of her son Damien Zachary Cord's death; cause was not disclosed.
- Pettet rose to fame as Kay, the most down-to-earth member of the Vassar graduate clique, in Sidney Lumet's 1966 adaptation of Mary McCarthy's The Group, alongside Candice Bergen, Jessica Walter, Joan Hackett and Shirley Knight.
- Pettet played Mata Bond — the love child of James Bond and Mata Hari — in the 1967 Casino Royale parody starring Peter Sellers, David Niven, Woody Allen and William Holden.
- Pettet built a prolific television career with a recurring role on Knots Landing and guest spots on Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Knight Rider and four episodes of Night Gallery between 1970 and 1972.
- Pettet was one of the last living eyewitnesses to the Sharon Tate murder: she and actress Barbara Lewis visited Tate for a poolside lunch on August 8, 1969, hours before the Manson family killed Tate and four others; the visit was later recreated in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, with Rumer Willis portraying her.
- Born Joanna Jane Salmon in London on November 16, 1942, Pettet moved to New York at 16 to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse and went on to three Broadway roles, including 1964's Poor Richard opposite Alan Bates, with whom she rekindled a relationship in 2002.
Why it matters: Pettet's death removes one of the few remaining direct eyewitnesses to the August 8, 1969 Manson family murders — she had lunched with Sharon Tate hours before the killings at Tate's home. That afternoon visit earned a fictional afterlife in Tarantino's 2019 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and her passing quietly closes a personal chapter to one of the 20th century's most infamous crimes.
