Janet Margolin (July 25, 1943 – December 17, 1993) was an American theater, television and movie actress.
Margolin was born in New York City and attended the School of Performing Arts. In 1961, at age 18, while a prop girl at the New York Shakespeare festival, she won a "pivotal" Broadway stage role as Anna in Morris West's Daughters of Silence. ; the New York Times, reviewing the play, listed her among leaders of "a fine cast" and said that "her Anna has a fragile, haunted dewiness."
In 1962, she played her first movie role as the female lead in the film David and Lisa. Her last movie role was in Ghostbusters II in 1989, and her last television roles were as a killer on an episode of Murder, She Wrote ("Deadly Misunderstanding") and as a victim in Columbo ("Murder in Malibu") in 1990.
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 was survived by her siblings (including actor Stuart Margolin), her husband, actor/director Ted Wass, and their 2 children.
Pretty, demure-looking Janet Margolin was born in New York City in 1943 and educated at the New York High School of Performing Arts. The long-haired brunette was discovered for films by director Frank Perry (I) as she was making great strides as a teen on Broadway. He saw her in the play "Daughter of Silence," for which she earned a Tony nomination, and took her immediately to Hollywood, casting her as the schizophrenic lass in David and Lisa (1962) opposite Keir Dullea. She bowled over the critics. The movie, which was praised for its handling of delicate, mature subject matter, should have paved the way to stardom for Janet but strangely didn't. She churned out uneventful second leads in such notable fare as Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), Greatest Story Ever Told, The (1965), and Nevada Smith (1966). Though she had better luck with her ingenue roles in Enter Laughing (1967) and Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969), the offers starting drying up by decade's end and she turned to TV work. Woody used her again, albeit briefly, in Annie Hall (1977). After a brief first marriage, Janet met and married actor Ted Wass of TV's "Soap" (1977) and "Blossom" (1991) fame. Janet was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died at age 50.
