Erin Moran

Erin Marie Moran-Fleischmann (October 18, 1960 – April 22, 2017) was an American actress, best known for playing Joanie Cunningham on the television sitcom Happy Days and its spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi.

Erin Marie Moran was born on October 18, 1960, in Burbank, California, near Los Angeles, and raised in nearby North Hollywood. She was the second-youngest of six children born to Sharon and Edward Moran. Her father was a finance manager, and her interest in acting was supported by her mother, who signed her with a talent agent when she was five years old. Two of her brothers are also actors, John Moran and Tony Moran, the latter of whom played the unmasked Michael Myers in the movie Halloween (1978).

She publicly accused her father of physical and mental abuse in 1992.

Moran's first acting role was at the age of five in a television commercial for First Federal Bank. At the age of seven, she was cast as Jenny Jones in the television series Daktari, during its fourth and final season in 1968. She made her feature-film debut in How Sweet It Is! (1968) with Debbie Reynolds, and made regular appearances on The Don Rickles Show in 1972, and guest appearances in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, My Three Sons, Bearcats!, Family Affair, and The Waltons, in an episode titled "The Song", in 1975. She also appeared in the television series Gunsmoke (as Rachel Parker in “Lijah”).

In 1974, at the age of 13, Moran was cast to play her best-known role as Joanie Cunningham on the sitcom Happy Days, the younger sister of Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard). Moran continued the role in 1982 in the short-lived spin-off series Joanie Loves Chachi. Moran later stated that she had only reluctantly agreed to star in the series because she would have preferred to remain with Happy Days. She won the Young Artist Award for Best Young Actress in a New Television Series for her role. After Joanie Loves Chachi's cancellation in 1983, she returned to Happy Days for its final season.

In 1983, Moran said in an interview that the Happy Days producers had pressured her to change from about the age of 15: They "suddenly wanted me to lose weight and become this sexy thing."

In the following years, Moran made several other television guest appearances, including The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, and Diagnosis: Murder, and starred opposite Edward Albert in the cult sci-fi horror film Galaxy of Terror (1981). She became estranged from the Happy Days cast, with People claiming that she called them "evil" in an interview, a statement she would deny on a later talk show.

In 2008, she was a contestant on VH1's reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Two years later, she made an appearance in the independent comedy feature Not Another B Movie (2010).