Joanna Pettet, Star of 'Casino Royale' and 'The Group,' Dead at 83

The London-born actress, whose career stretched from three Broadway runs to recurring television work on 'Knots Landing,' died leaving behind a filmography that a later generation largely encountered secondhand — through Rumer Willis's portrayal of her in a 2019 Tarantino film.

Joanna Pettet, born in London in 1942, died at age 83.
She appeared in the 1966 Sidney Lumet ensemble film 'The Group' and the 1967 spy spoof 'Casino Royale.'
Pettet had three Broadway credits and recurring roles on both 'Dr. Kildare' and 'Knots Landing.'
Rumer Willis portrayed Pettet in Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' (2019).
No cause of death had been publicly announced at the time of filing.

Joanna Pettet, the London-born actress whose film credits included Sidney Lumet's 1966 ensemble drama The Group and the all-star 1967 spy spoof Casino Royale, died at 83. No cause was announced.

Pettet arrived in New York in the early 1960s and accumulated three Broadway appearances before Hollywood took notice. Television work followed: recurring roles on Dr. Kildare and, later, Knots Landing.

Her Casino Royale credit placed her alongside David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, and Orson Welles in a production that deployed five directors across one shoot. She played Mata Bond, daughter of Mata Hari and James Bond — a role that required no particular plausibility and received none.

A new cohort of filmgoers encountered her not through her own work but through Rumer Willis's portrayal of her in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), a film about the Sharon Tate murders in which Pettet appears as a supporting figure at the Tate household in the summer of 1969.

She is survived, so far as public record reflects, by a career that peaked in the late 1960s and a Wikipedia page that Tarantino made considerably more trafficked.