Joanna Pettet

By 1990, she had quietly retired from acting. Roberts committed suicide by barbiturate poisoning in Los Angeles, California. She also guest-starred four times on the classic Rod Serling anthology series "Night Gallery" and was a frequent visitor of "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." After playing an LAPD homicide detective investigating the murder of singer Ciji Dunne (Lisa Hartman) on "Knots Landing" in 1983, Pettet's career slowed down in the mid-1980s. Other movies include Our Man in Havana, A Flea in Her Ear, Doctors' Wives, Wild Rovers, O Lucky Man!, Murder on the Orient Express, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Yanks and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. Her feature film appearance became sporadic in the 1970s, but Pettet re-emerged as the star of over a dozen made-for-television movies during that decade, including "The Delphi Bureau" (1972), "The Weekend Nun" (1972), "Pioneer Woman" (1973), "A Cry in the Wilderness" (1974), "The Desperate Miles" (1975), "The Hancocks" (1976), "Sex and the Married Woman" (1977), and "The Return of Frank Cannon" (1980). She starred in 1963's This Sporting Life, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. During that time, she married American actor Alex Cord and gave birth to a son in 1968. In 1962 she married Rex Harrison. They were divorced in 1971.

Pettet got her start on Broadway in such plays as "Take Her, She's Mine," "The Chinese Prime Minister" and "Poor Richard" with Alan Bates and Gene Hackman before she was discovered by director Sidney Lumet for his sumptuous 1966 film adaptation of Mary McCarthy's novel, "The Group." The success of that film launched a film career that included roles in "Night of the General" (1967), the James Bond spoof "Casino Royale" (1967), "Blue" (1968) with Terence Stamp, and the Victorian period comedy "The Best House in London" (1969). Born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales, she debuted in movies in 1953 in The Limping Man, but she became well-known by her 1960 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which she appeared opposite Albert Finney. Her mother remarried and settled in Canada, where she was adopted by her stepfather and assumed "Pettet" as her last name. Rachel Roberts (September 20, 1927 - November 26, 1980) was a British actress. Her father, Harold Nigel Edgerton Salmon, was a British RAF pilot killed in the war. Talented, blonde Joanna Pettet was born Joanna Jane Salmon on November 16, 1944 in London, England.

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