Joan Hickson OBE (5 August 1906 - 17 October 1998) was an English actress of theatre, film and television, who achieved fame in her old age playing Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in the television series of the same name.

Joan Hickson was born in 1906 at Kingsthorpe, Northampton. Her stage career began with provincial theater in 1927, going on to a long series of West End comedies, usually playing the part of a confused or eccentric middle-age woman. She performed at the Regent's Park Open Air Theater at the time London was subject to World War II bombing. Her work gradually included screen roles: Guinea Pig, The (1948), Card, The (1952), 39 Steps, The (1959) - over 80 movies in all - but her stage career continued, with parts in three Peter Nichols plays, Coward's "Blithe Spirit" (1976) and and a Tony award supporting actress performance in Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce" (1977). Her first Agatha Christie role was Miss Pryce in the play "Appointment With Death" (1946), which prompted Christie herself to write "I hope you will play my dear Miss Marple." She began playing this, her best known part, in her late 70s, in a BBC television series which ran from 1984 to 1992. A Miss Marple fan, Queen Elizabeth, awarded her the Order of the British Empire in 1987. After the series closed Joan recorded audio books of the Christie mysteries. She died, aged 92, in hospital at Colchester, Essex, survived by a son and daughter (her physician husband Eric Butler died in 1967).