Joanna Pettet, the British-born actor who rose to fame in the 1960s with her role in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale, has died at the age of 83. Pettet passed away on 7 July 2026, as confirmed by family sources.
Breakthrough in Casino Royale
Pettet played Mata Bond in the 1967 film, the illegitimate daughter of Mata Hari and Sir James Bond (played by David Niven). The movie, despite lukewarm reviews and a troubled production involving five directors, became a box-office hit. Pettet described her role as “campy” and performed an exotic dance in a Buddhist temple.
Her performance in Casino Royale was part of a busy year in 1967, which also saw her in The Night of the Generals and Robbery. In The Night of the Generals, she played the daughter of a Nazi officer suspected of murder, opposite Tom Courtenay. In Robbery, she portrayed the wife of a crime boss (Stanley Baker) trying to stop a railway heist based on the 1963 Great Train Robbery.
Early Life and Career
Born Joanna Jane Salmon in Chelsea, London on 16 November 1942, she was the daughter of Cecily (née Tremaine) and Harold Salmon, a wartime RAF pilot. Her father went missing in 1943, presumed dead, when his bomber disappeared en route from Newfoundland to Iceland. Her mother then emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, Quebec, and later married Charles Pettet.
Pettet attended Westmount High School and performed in a McGill University musical, Got It Made, co-written by her boyfriend Allan Shiach (later screenwriter Allan Scott). She used her earnings and her mother’s savings to study drama at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York at age 18.
Broadway Success and Film Debut
She appeared in three Broadway plays, including the Jean Kerr comedy Poor Richard (1964-65) at the Helen Hayes Theatre, where she played secretary to an English poet (Alan Bates). Her performance earned her a Theatre World award, with New Yorker critic John McCarten calling her “the most radiant ingenue I’ve seen around in a long time.” Pettet later revealed an eight-month affair with Bates, which continued intermittently until she nursed him before his death from cancer in 2003. Bates left her £95,000 in his will.
Her film debut came in The Group (1966), playing one of eight Ivy League graduates, with Larry Hagman as her drunken playwright husband. Despite mixed reviews, the movie was her breakthrough.
Later Career and Television Work
After leaving Britain, Pettet settled into guest roles on American television series such as Mannix (1971), McCloud (1973), Police Woman (1975), The Love Boat (1978-82), Knight Rider (1984), and Murder, She Wrote (1987). She also had a run on the soap opera Knots Landing in 1983, playing a detective investigating a murder. She expressed regret at not landing a long-running series, saying, “I’d like a series. I’d like to know that there is something I have to do every single day.”
Her final screen appearance was in the 1991 film Terror in Paradise. She then retired to Arizona.
Personal Life and Legacy
Pettet had a year-long romance with Victor Lownes of the Playboy empire and a relationship with actor Terence Stamp. She married American actor Alex Cord in 1968, but later called the marriage a “sham” and said Stamp was the father of her son Damien, born four months after the wedding. She and Cord divorced in 1989. Her son died of a drug overdose in 1995.
Pettet remained part of Hollywood folklore as one of the last people to see Sharon Tate alive before Tate’s murder by the Manson family in 1969. She had lunch at Tate’s home the day before. This event was dramatized in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, with Rumer Willis playing Pettet.
