This week in Los Angeles, an actress who garnered two Emmy Awards for her performance in a TV movie alongside Katharine Hepburn was spotted in public.
Her role as the innocent yet optimistic disabled character, Laura Wingfield, in the adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ renowned play, The Glass Menagerie, received widespread praise.
The talented actress also graced the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the popular series led by Patrick Stewart in the iconic role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Throughout her extensive career, she shared the screen with a variety of prominent figures, including Sylvester Stallone, Tom Selleck, Gary Oldman, and even Macaulay Culkin.
At 86 years old, she appeared lively and energetic while enjoying some sunshine and a breath of fresh air under the warm Southern California skies.
Can you guess who she is?
An actress who earned two Emmys for a TV movie she starred in opposite Katharine Hepburn was spotted in Los Angeles this week
Her award-winning turn was as the sweetly naive disabled girl Laura Wingfield in an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ classic play The Glass Menagerie
She is none other than actress Joanna Miles, whom Star Trek: The Next Generation fans will recognize as Spock’s stepmother Perrin.
The Daily Mail has contacted Miles’ representative for comment and has yet to hear back.
She was born in March 1940 in Nice, France to two painters, American Jeanne Patterson Miles and Dutch national Johannes Schiefer.
When she was two months old, the Nazis invaded France, and during the war her mother’s US citizenship served as an escape hatch for the family to flee to America.
‘We were a headline in the New York Times as the last Americans out of France,’ she told Broadway World. ‘My father was from Europe and happy to get out.’
Miles inherited her parents’ inclination toward the arts, but observed in retrospect that ‘although they both became successful, I found my mother’s struggles particularly frightening. So I decided acting was a better idea.’
She studied the profession during a golden age of education in the field, enrolling at the Actors Studio in New York City at a time in the 1960s when her classmates included Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
In the fledgling stages of her career, she acted with Hoffman in The Glass Menagerie in stock and appeared on TV shows like NYPD and All My Children.
Her breakthrough came in 1973 when she was asked to read for the part of the psychologically delicate Laura in a TV movie of The Glass Menagerie.
She is none other than actress Joanna Miles, whom Star Trek: The Next Generation fans will recognize as Spock’s stepmother Perrin (pictured)
Her breakthrough came in 1973 when she was asked to read for the part of Laura Wingfield in a TV adaptation of the Tennessee Williams drama The Glass Menagerie
Hepburn fronted the cast as Laura and her brother Tom’s domineering mother Amanda, whose ironclad grip on her children makes them both begin to chafe
Williams, who had scored his first Broadway hit with The Glass Menagerie in 1944, ‘couldn’t have been more pleased’ with the TV adaptation, Miles said
A similar view was shared by Emmy voters, who gave Miles two gongs; she is pictured at the ceremony with her co-star and fellow winner Michael Moriarty
Sam Waterston, later of Law & Order fame, was cast as Laura’s older brother Tom, with Hepburn fronting the cast as their domineering mother Amanda, whose ironclad grip on her children makes them both chafe in different ways.
When Miles arrived for her audition, she found herself in a bind, as she had prepared a scene with Amanda but was asked to play another sequence.
‘So Katharine Hepburn agreed to read with me, and she cast me on the spot. It was truly a wonderful experience,’ said Miles of the TV film, which was shot in London.
‘Katharine Hepburn was an exciting person, who made the set a very demanding place. She even rode around London on her bicycle.’
Williams, who had scored his first Broadway hit with The Glass Menagerie in 1944, ‘couldn’t have been more pleased’ with the TV adaptation, Miles said.
A similar view was shared by Emmy voters, who gave Miles two gongs – Supporting Actress of the Year and the Super Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in Drama.
In 1975 she appeared in the post-apocalyptic camp classic The Ultimate Warrior, with Yul Brynner in the titular role, Max von Sydow as the tribal leader who hires him and Miles as the latter’s pregnant daughter.
Her career proceeded with guest shots on shows like Kojak, Barnaby Jones, The Incredible Hulk, Barney Miller, Trapper John MD and Dallas.
In 1975 she appeared in the post-apocalyptic camp classic The Ultimate Warrior, with Yul Brynner (right) in the titular role and Miles (left) as a tribal leader’s pregnant daughter
Five years later she held a supporting role in Sylvester Stallone’s comic book flop Judge Dredd, starring him as the title character
Set in a dystopia in which order is maintained by ‘Judges’ who can both capture criminals and execute them at will, the movie featured Miles as Dredd’s colleague Judge McGruder
In 1990 she featured as Hamlet’s mother Gertrude in the film adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman playing the title roles in a cast including Richard Dreyfuss.
Five years later she held a supporting role in Sylvester Stallone’s comic book flop Judge Dredd, starring him as the title character.
Set in a dystopia in which order is maintained by ‘Judges’ who can both capture criminals and execute them at will, the movie featured Miles as one of Dredd’s colleagues, Judge Hilda Margaret McGruder.
Her television work in the 1990s included a two-episode arc on Star Trek: The Next Generation as Perrin, the second wife of Mark Lenard’s character Sarek, who is the father of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock from the original series.
‘Star Trek was such an unlikely job for me,’ Miles reflected years later. ‘I’m still invited to Star Trek conventions and frequently asked to sign autographs.’
She recalled that the series’ ‘sets were something wonderful. I brought my young son one day and the crew activated the doors and set pieces to give him a treat.’
Miles’ most recent theatrically released movie was the 2007 comedy Sex and Breakfast, led by Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin; Miles is pictured in her role as a therapist
In 2001 she held a small role as a shopkeeper’s wife in the TV western movie Crossfire Trail, starring Tom Selleck and Wilford Brimley along with Virginia Madsen, the sister of the late Reservoir Dogs star Michael Madsen.
Miles’ most recent theatrically released movie was the 2007 comedy Sex and Breakfast, led by Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, who was by then in his 20s.
The movie centers on two couples who try to reignite the spark in their relationships by dabbling in swinging on the advice of a therapist played by Miles.
Although her most recent screen role was the 2013 TV movie Hunt for the Labyrinth Killer, she kept acting onstage after that job, such as in the 2015 play Front Door Open, in which she starred as an agoraphobe.
On the personal front, Miles has been married since 1978 to the producer and writer Michael Brandman, with whom she has one son.
