Who was Joan Copeland? Law and order actor dies at 99

Joan Copeland, best known for her part in American police drama ‘Law and Order’, died early Tuesday in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment, her son Eric told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 99. 

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Copeland, who was the sister of playwright Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe’s one-time sister-in-law, was  born Joan Maxine Miller. She made her Broadway debut in 1948 and starred in some popular productions like ‘Detective Story’, ‘Sundown Beach’, ‘Not For Children’, ’45 Seconds From Broadway’ and ‘Two by Two’.

“I had the great honour of sitting with Joan Copeland at the @PublicTheaterNY for a reading of ‘No Villain’, the play her brother Arthur Miller wrote about their childhood together. She was a delight and so excited by the play’s rediscovery. A sad loss,” theatre director Sean Turner tweeted. 

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Copeland won the Obie Award for her performance in Richard Greenburg’s The American Plan in 1991. She was also known for her work in ‘ Pal Joey’ and ‘The American Clock’, for which she earned a Drama Desk Award. 

Some of her TV credits include –  E.R., All In The Family, The Patty Duke Show, Cagney & Lacey and NYPD Blue. She played Judge Rebecca Stein on Law & Order from 1991 to 2001.

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“From the time I was a little girl I had the stage bug. It was like a big dream, like kids who want to fly to the moon today. Perhaps I was unconsciously influenced by my brother. He had made it. I was desperate to get out of the dreariness I was living in,” Copeland told The New York Times in 1981.

While talking about why she took a stage name, the actor said, “I didn’t want Miller, for obvious reasons; I did not want to trade on my brother’s name.”

She was married to bacteriologist George Kupchik from 1943 until his death in July 1989.