Janet Margolin

Janet Margolin (July 25, 1943 – December 17, 1993) was an American theater, television and film actress.

Early life

Margolin was born in New York City, the daughter of Jewish parents Benjamin and Annette (née Lief) Margolin. Her father was a Russian-born accountant who founded the Nephrosis Foundation, now the Kidney Foundation of New York.

She attended the High School of Performing Arts. In 1961 at the age of 18, while a prop girl at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Margolin won a pivotal Broadway stage role as Anna in Morris West's Daughter of Silence. The New York Times in reviewing the play listed her among leaders of "a fine cast" and said that "her Anna has a fragile, haunted dewiness."

Career

In 1962, Margolin played her first movie role as the female lead in David and Lisa. She co-starred with Marlon Brando in 1965's Morituri and with Steve McQueen in the western Nevada Smith. She later played Wanda, the love interest of the lead character David Kolowitz, in the movie Enter Laughing (1967).

In Take the Money and Run (1969), she played the love interest of the bumbling thief played by Woody Allen, and in Annie Hall (1977), she played the social-climbing wife of Allen's character.

In 1979, Margolin co-starred with Roy Scheider in director Jonathan Demme's thriller Last Embrace.

Margolin's last film appearance was in Ghostbusters II in 1989, and her last television roles were as a killer in an episode of Murder, She Wrote ("Deadly Misunderstanding") and as a victim in Columbo: Murder in Malibu in 1990.

Personal life

Margolin died of ovarian cancer at the age of 50 on December 17, 1993, in Los Angeles, California. She was cremated and her ashes were placed in an urn garden at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. She and her husband actor/director Ted Wass had two children, Julian and Matilda.

Margolin frequently and erroneously has been identified as the sister of actor Stuart Margolin and director Arnold Margolin, though she acted alongside Stuart Margolin in the pilot episode of the TV series Lanigan's Rabbi, where they appeared as husband and wife. She was a close friend of producer/actress Jennifer Salt, who had co-starred with Wass in the 1970s sitcom Soap.

Awards and nominations