Joan Maxine Kupchik (née Miller; June 1, 1922 – January 4, 2022), known professionally as Joan Copeland, was an American actress. She was the younger sister of playwright Arthur Miller. She began her career during the mid-1940s, appearing in theatre in New York City, where, shortly thereafter, she would become one of the first members admitted to the newly formed Actors Studio. She moved into television and film during the 1950s while still maintaining an active stage career. She is best known for her performances in the 1977 Broadway revival of Pal Joey and her award-winning performance in the 1981 play The American Clock. She also played a number of prominent roles on various soap operas throughout her career, including Andrea Whiting on Search for Tomorrow and Gwendolyn Lord Abbott on One Life to Live. She voiced Tanana in Brother Bear.
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Personal life and death
Miller was born to a middle-class Jewish family in New York City. Her father, Isidore, was a woman's clothes manufacturer, and her mother, Augusta (née Barnett), was a schoolteacher and a housewife. Her family was of Polish-Jewish origins. She was the younger sister of Kermit Miller and playwright Arthur Miller and was briefly sister-in-law to Marilyn Monroe, with whom she shared a birthday. She was married to George J. Kupchik, an engineer, from 1946 until his death in 1989. She had a son named Eric with him.
Copeland died at her home in Manhattan on January 4, 2022, at the age of 99.
Career
Copeland began her career in the theatre, making her professional debut as Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1945. She made her Broadway debut as Nadine in the original 1948 production of Bessie Breuer's Sundown Beach. Thereafter she maintained an active career in the theatre. Her other Broadway credits include Detective Story (1949), Not for Children (1951), The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), Handful of Fire (1958), standby for Vivien Leigh in Tovarich (1963), Something More! (1964), standby for Kate Reid in The Price (1968), standby for Katharine Hepburn in Coco (1969), Two By Two (1970), Pal Joey (1976), Checking Out (1976), and The American Clock (1980), the latter of which was written by her brother Arthur Miller; Copeland won the 1981 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. In 2001, Copeland was set to play the role of Zelda in the Broadway mounting of Neil Simon's 45 Seconds from Broadway, however she left the production during rehearsals (replace by Rebecca Schull) and never actually performed in the production.
