Janet Margolin (July 25, 1943 – December 17, 1993) was an American theater, television and movie actress.
Margolin was born in New York City, the daughter of Benjamin Margolin, an accountant who was born in Russia and was founder and president of the Nephrosis Foundation, now the Kidney Foundation of New York.
She attended the School of Performing Arts. In 1961, at age 18, while a prop girl at the New York Shakespeare festival, she won a "pivotal" Broadway stage role as Anna in Morris West's Daughters of Silence.; the New York Times, reviewing the play, listed her among leaders of "a fine cast" and said that "her Anna has a fragile, haunted dewiness."
In 1962, she played her first movie role as the female lead in the film David and Lisa. Her last movie role was in Ghostbusters II in 1989, and her last television roles were as a killer on an episode of Murder, She Wrote ("Deadly Misunderstanding") and as a victim in Columbo ("Murder in Malibu") in 1990.
Margolin died of ovarian cancer at the age of 50 on December 17, 1993 in Los Angeles, California. She was cremated and her ashes were placed in an urn garden at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. She was survived by her siblings, her husband, actor/director Ted Wass, and their two children.
Margolin is sometimes identified as the sister of actor Stuart Margolin and his brother, director Arnold Margolin. However, obituaries of Margolin and her father indicate that she had no brothers.
