Joan Hotchkis

Joan Hotchkis (September 21, 1927 – September 27, 2022) was an American stage, screen and television actress, writer and performance artist. A lifetime member of the Actors Studio and the Dramatists Guild, Hotchkis was best known for playing Dr. Nancy Cunningham for several seasons on The Odd Couple, for co-writing with Eric Morris the seminal acting manual "No Acting Please", which is still used in colleges and conservatories, and for her groundbreaking performance art works in the 1990s.

Early life Hotchkis was born in Los Angeles on September 21, 1927. Her father, Preston, worked in insurance and investment; Hotchkis was raised in San Marino, and attended Westridge School in nearby Pasadena. She studied at Smith College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1949. She then obtained a master's degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street Teachers College three years later,

Career At the age of 26, Hotchkis switched from teaching to acting, and Write Me A Murder, before playing Myra on the soap opera The Secret Storm for several years in the early 1960s. She moved back to Los Angeles in 1967 and worked steadily in television through the 1970s. Most notably, Hotchkis played Dr. Nancy Cunningham, sometime girlfriend of Oscar Madison on the television version of The Odd Couple and Ellen in the Emmy-winning series My World and Welcome to It. Charlie's Angels, Mannix, Barnaby Jones, The resulting film, Legacy (1975), won Best Newcomer at the Tehran Film Festival. She subsequently starred in The Glass Menagerie at Los Angeles Theater Center and did occasional television roles.

Tearsheets Productions Beginning in the late 1980s, Hotchkis resumed writing original material, this time moving beyond legitimate theater into the performance art world. She founded the Santa Monica-based Tearsheets Productions and wrote, produced and performed two solo performance pieces. toured the United States in the early 1990s and went abroad to the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe, where it was the only U.S. production to win a Fringe First Award. Her second solo work was Elements of Flesh: Or Screwing Saved My Ass (1996), about aging and sexuality.

Personal life and death Hotchkis married Robert Foster in June 1958.

Hotchkis died on September 27, 2022, in Los Angeles. She was 95, and suffered from congestive heart failure prior to her death.

Filmography