Actress Joan Benedict Has Died

(RepublicanView.org) – Actress Joan Benedict has died at age 96. Benedict suffered a stroke and died from related complications at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, her family confirmed. Best known for playing Edith Fairchild on “General Hospital,” Benedict also starred in “Days of Our Lives.” She was married to fellow actor Rod Steiger, who died in 2002.

Benedict broke into the entertainment industry in the 1950s when she joined the “Candid Camera” crew. She later won roles in “The Steve Allen Show,” “The Smith Family,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Apple’s Way,” and “Fantasy Island.”

Her film credits include “The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington,” “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” “Dollhouse,” “The Prize Fighter” and “Perfect Victims.”

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Benedict began performing at age seven at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She later attended the Rome Opera Ballet School before studying acting with coaches Robert Lewis and Stella Adler. She initially hoped to become a dancer but changed direction and focused on developing a film and TV career.

The actress married actor John Myhers in 1962 and remained married until his death thirty years later. She remarried in 2000 to Rod Steiger, who died from pneumonia and kidney failure two years later. She then had a relationship with Jeremy Slate, who died of esophageal cancer in 2006. In 2016, she said both of her husbands and her partner Jeremy were “wonderful men” who supported her acting career. In 2001, she starred alongside Steiger in two movies, “A Month of Sundays” and “The Flying Dutchman.”

In 2016, Benedict published her autobiography, “Brooklyn Baby: A Hollywood Star’s Amazing Journey Through Love, Loss & Laughter,” where she described working with Hollywood icons and the trauma of losing her partners. She also performed in a one-woman show entitled “The Loves of My Life,” where she paid tribute to Myhers, Steiger, and Slate.

In her autobiography, the actress wrote that she had lived a full life and had “no regrets.”