Joanna Merlin, “Fiddler on the Roof” star and prolific Broadway casting director, dies at 92
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Joanna Merlin, the actress who originated the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, died in Los Angeles on Sunday at age 92. A cause of death was not immediately released.
Merlin's death was announced on the Instagram page for New York University's Tisch graduate acting program, where the actress had served on the faculty for 25 years. "Joanna will be deeply missed at Grad Acting, by the Chekhov community, and by the many people she touched through her artistry," reads a statement from the program.
Best known for Fiddler and her work with Stephen Sondheim, Merlin was born Joann Ratner in Chicago in 1931. After graduating from UCLA, Merlin studied acting under Michael Chekhov. Her screen debut came in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 hit The Ten Commandments, which remains one of the most financially successful films of all time. She appeared in one more movie, Weddings and Babies, and a few television series like CBS Repertoire Workshop before pivoting to theater full time.
United Artists/Archive Photos/Getty Joanna Merlin
Merlin made her Broadway debut as Gwendolyn in Becket starring Laurence Olivier in 1961. After serving as a replacement performer for A Far Country, the actress' next stage production was Fiddler on the Roof in 1964. She portrayed Tzeitel, the oldest daughter in the central family.
Merlin then became a casting director for some of the most prominent Broadway productions of the 1970s and '80s. Most of her best-known projects were Stephen Sondheim's musicals like Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, and Into the Woods. She also cast shows like Evita, On the Twentieth Century, and A Doll's Life, as well as movies like John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China and Bernardo Bertolucci's Best Picture winner The Last Emperor.
Merlin also continued acting in select projects throughout her career, appearing in movies like All That Jazz, Fame, Mystic Pizza, and City of Angels, as well as episodes of TV shows like Law & Order, All My Children, Northern Exposure, The Good Wife, and Homeland. The biggest screen project of her later career, though, was playing Judge Lena Petrovsky on 43 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The actress joined the faculty at NYU Tisch's graduate acting program in 1998, and founded the Michael Chekhov Association the following year, teaching acting workshops.
In an interview with Backstage in 2013, Merlin reflected on the multifaceted work she had done throughout her career. "What I found is that one thing feeds the other," she said. "My acting career helped me coach actors who came in to audition. The casting and acting helped me learn how to teach… I felt that there were a lot of good actors who were not giving good auditions. I tried to figure out why this was happening and what I could do to help."
She is survived by her two children.
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