Joanne Linville

Joanne Linville was an American actress who trained with Stella Adler and became a familiar face on television from the late 1950s onward. Born in Bakersfield, California, she worked as an oral surgeon's assistant and danced professionally to pay for her acting studies. She appeared in films including Scorpio (1973), A Star Is Born (1976), and James Dean (2001), in which she played the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Her best-known performance came in 1968, when she guest-starred as a Romulan commander on Star Trek, a role that earned her cult status. She also starred in the Twilight Zone episode The Passersby and turned up on The Guiding Light, Gunsmoke, Columbo, Dynasty, and L.A. Law, among many others. On Broadway she played Valeria in Daughter of Silence in 1961. She retired from acting in the 1980s and taught at the Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles, where Mark Ruffalo was one of her students.