Television and film actress Judy Pace has died aged 83. Her family emotionally shared that she passed "peacefully in her sleep" on Wednesday while visiting them in California.

Pace made her screen debut in William Castle's 1963 Cold War espionage thriller 13 Frightened Girls, becoming the first Black woman to secure a contract at Columbia Studios. During the 1960s, she appeared in television episodes of I Spy, Batman, Bewitched, Days of Our Lives, The Flying Nun, The Mod Squad, Tarzan and Peyton Place. Talking with Roger Ebert about her role on Peyton Place, she said: “I play a character who has hang-ups like everybody else. I’m not exactly a lady on the show, I suppose; I’m pregnant, running away from the police and blackmailing the doctor. And I don’t come from the suburbs; I come from Harlem.”

Throughout the 1970s, Pace featured in numerous Blaxploitation pictures, including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and The Slams (1973).

She also played the wife of American football icon Gale Sayers in Brian's Song (1971), which starred James Caan and Billy Dee Williams as Chicago Bears running backs Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, the NFL's first interracial roommates.

She also broke new ground in 1965 when she became the first Black "bachelorette" contestant on "The Dating Game."

Before achieving success as an actress, Pace worked as a model, becoming Ebony Fashion Fair’s youngest in 1961.

She was formerly married to actor Don Mitchell, with whom she had two daughters, but they separated in 1984 following 12 years of marriage.

She subsequently wed baseball legend Curt Flood, and they remained together until his death in 1997.