Joanna Pettet, Actress Who Was a Sharon Tate Confidante, Dies at 83

Joanna Pettet, a ’60s beauty who was one of the last people ever to see Sharon Tate alive, died July 7.

She was 83.

Her friend, Pam DuBois, announced the sad passing on Facebook, writing, “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.”

Damien Zachary Cord, her son by ex-husband Alex Cord, died in 1995 of a heroin OD. Cord died in 2021.

Born in London on November 16, 1942, Pettet moved to NYC by age 16, where she studied with Sanford Meisner.

At 19, she debuted on Broadway in “Take Her, She’s Mine” (1961).

From 1964, she was a familiar face on TV.

In the controversial big-budget feature-film adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s “The Group,” about eight female Vassar grads in the 1930s, she was Kay, working opposite Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter and more in what became a big hit. The film touched on hot-button issues for the day — homosexuality, contraception, and abortion among them.

On August 8, 1969, Pettet lunched with a pregnant Sharon Tate just hours before the Manson Family murdered Tate, her unborn child, and four others. This twist of fate was dramatized in “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood” (2019), in which Pettet was played by Rumer Willis.

Some of her other feature films included “The Night of the Generals” (1967), “Casino Royale” (1967), and “Blue” (1968).

In the ‘70s, she appeared in many made-for-TV films and also specialized in horror movies, among them “Welcome to Arrow Beach” (1974) and “The Evil” (1978).

She was a frequent TV guest star, including anchoring the highly regarded “Night Gallery” episode “The House” (1970), a ghost story that is propelled by her ethereal beauty. She appeared on three other episodes, also among the series’ most acclaimed.

Other TV spots: “Route 66” (1964), “The Doctors” (1965), “The Nurses” (1965), “Dr. Kildare” (1966), “Mannix” (1971), “McCloud” (1973), “Police Woman” (1975), “The Love Boat” (1979-1982), “Charlie’s Angels” (1980), “Murder, She Wrote” (1987), and her final acting gig, an “ABC Afterschool Special” (1989), which was shot after her final feature, “Terror in Paradise” (1990).

In recent years, Pettet had a major health scare when she was trapped under a rock in the California desert for hours, leading to shoulder-replacement surgery in 2021.

After divorcing Cord in 1989, she never remarried.