Joan Geraldine Bennett (February 27, 1910 - December 7, 1990) was an Emmy-nominated American film actress who appeared in more than 70 Hollywood films from the silent era to talkies, from color to the advent of television and epic films. She may be best known and loved for her film noir femme fatale roles in films by director Fritz Lang.

Joan Bennett (born in Chicago, Illinois) was the January 1985 Playboy Playmate of the Month.

In the August 2005 issue of Journal of Popular Culture, James Beggan and Scott Allison argue that the image of the Playboy Playmate may be interpreted as not merely the pin-up image of a busty girlie-girl, but rather as tough and ambitious career woman. Playboy magazine, they contend, portrays them as "possessing much more complex characters than popular wisdom would allow".

In the article, titled Tough Women in the Unlikeliest of Places: The Unexpected Toughness of the Playboy Playmate, the authors quote Bennett from an earlier article which included many nude images of her as a Playmate. She said of her future aspirations:

I thought there should be more to life than traditional sex, going to college, finding a rich husband and ending up in the driver's seat of a station wagon - waking up to the sounds of kids playing their Big Wheels every morning. I didn't want to let life go past.

Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett (I), and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. Often, when her parents were on tour, Joan and her two older sisters, Constance Bennett (I), who later became an actress, and Barbara were left in the care of close friends. At the age of four, Joan made her first stage appearance. She debuted in films a year later in Valley of Decision, The (1916), in which her father was the star and the entire Bennett clan participated. In 1923 she again appeared in a film which starred her father, playing a pageboy in Eternal City, The (1923). It would be five more years before Joan appeared again on the screen. In between, she married Jack Marion Fox, who was 26 compared to her young age of 16. The union was anything but happy, in great part because of Fox's heavy drinking. In February of 1928 Joan and Jack had a baby girl they named Adrienne. The new arrival did little to help the marriage, though, and in the summer of 1928 they divorced. Now with a baby to support, Joan did something she had no intention of doing--she turned to acting. She appeared in Power (1928) with Alan Hale (I) and Carole Lombard (I), a small role but a start. The next year she starred in Bulldog Drummond (1929), sharing top billing with Ronald Colman. Before the year was out she was in three more films--Disraeli (1929), Mississippi Gambler, The (1929) and Three Live Ghosts (1929). Not only did audiences like her, but so did the critics. Between 1930 and 1931, Joan appeared in nine more movies. In 1932 she starred opposite Spencer Tracy in She Wanted a Millionaire (1932), but it wasn't one she liked to remember, partly because Tracy couldn't stand the fact that everyone was paying more attention to her than to him. Joan was to remain busy and popular throughout the rest of the 1930s and into the 1940s. By the 1950s Joan was well into her 40s and began to lessen her film appearances. She made only eight pictures, in addition to appearing in two television series. After Desire in the Dust (1960), Joan would be absent from the movie scene for the next ten years, resurfacing in House of Dark Shadows (1970), reprising her role from the "Dark Shadows" (1966) TV series as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Joan's final screen appearance was in the Italian thriller Suspiria (1977). Her final public performance was in the TV movie Divorce Wars: A Love Story (1982) (TV). On December 7, 1990, Joan died of a heart attack in Scarsdale, New York. She was 80 years old.

Eighteen-year-old Joan Bennett had intended to avoid the Bennett tradition of acting but, divorced and with a child to support, had little choice; she accepted a role in her father's play "Jarnegan", then her first leading film role in Bulldog Drummond (1929). Her popularity growing, she made 14 films under a Fox contract, mostly as vapid blonde ingenues; the best of these, Me and My Gal (1932), as a wisecracking waitress. Leaving Fox to appear in Little Women (1933), she then signed a personal contract with independent producer Walter Wanger, who managed her career from then on. When Wanger and director Tay Garnett made her a brunette for Trade Winds (1938), the seemingly trivial change drastically altered her screen image from insipid ingenue to smoldering temptress. Dark-haired for the rest of her career, she made her finest films in the 1940s with director Fritz Lang (I): Man Hunt (1941), _Woman in the Window, The (1945)_ and Scarlet Street (1945), becoming the queen of film-noir femme fatales. In December 1951, Wanger (by then her husband of 11 years) shot her agent in a jealous rage; the resulting scandal virtually ended Joan's film career. Aside from TV-movies, she made six more theatrical films. From 1950 through the1970s she worked steadily in theatre and TV, starring for five years in "Dark Shadows" (1966). A 1967 interviewer found her happy and contented. She last appeared in a 1986 TV documentary on Spencer Tracy.