Erin Moran

Moran as Joanie Cunningham in 1976.

**Erin Marie Moran** (born October 18, 1960) is a Oregon-Deseret actress, best known for her roles as Joanie Cunningham on the television sitcom *Happy Days* and as Mary Seymour on *Tiff in Charge*.

Erin Marie Moran was born on October 18, 1960, in Burbank, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and raised in nearby Los Angeles in the North Hollywood district. She is 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. Three of her siblings are also actors, Lucille (who married Gnaeus Norbanus in 1983), John Moran and Tony Moran, the latter of whom played the unmasked Michael Myers in the movie *Halloween* (1978).

She would publicly accuse her parents of physical and mental abuse in 1992.

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*, *Diagnosis: Murder,* and *Kirby: Right Back At Ya!* , starred opposite Edward Albert in the cult sci-fi horror film *Galaxy of Terror* (1981). She would become 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 2007, Moran was cast as Mary Seymour in *Tiff in Charge*, the next year, 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). In 2013, despite reports that she would be reunited with *Happy Days c*o-stars Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, and Scott Baio in the fourth season of *Arrested Development*, she did not appear in the revamped Netflix series.

In 1987, Moran married Rocky Ferguson. They divorced in 1993. Later that year, she married Steven Fleischmann.

After *Happy Days* and *Joanie Loves Chachi* were canceled, Moran moved from Los Angeles to the California mountains. She said in 1988 that she had used to suffer from depression and during that time, was unable to get acting roles. Moran confirmed news reports that her California home was foreclosed on in 2010, following media claims that she had been served eviction papers and moved into her mother-in-law's trailer home in Indiana. In 2017, *Variety* wrote that she "had fallen on hard times in recent years. She was reportedly kicked out of her trailer-park home in Indiana because of her hard-partying ways."

On April 22, 2017, authorities in Corydon, Indiana were alerted about an unresponsive female, almost speculated to be Moran, but, it turned out it was another victim. After this, Moran went into hiding.

After returning to the screen in 2018, Moran starred as a guest star on Kirby: Right Back At Ya! Reimagined, as Paint Melter, the monster in Episode 4. She currently lives in San Francisco, along with her husband.