Beth Jane Porter (May 23, 1942 – August 1, 2023) was an American stage, film and television actress and writer, who worked in Britain for most of her career.

After appearing in the American premiere of Jules Romains's Donogoo in 1961 at the Greenwich Mews Theatre,[1] Isaac Babel's Sunset at the Chelsea Theater Center in 1966, and later that year as the star of David Starkweather's Ascent at The Playwrights Workshop, Porter was chosen as a member of original Obie Award-winning New York LaMaMa Troupe under director Tom O'Horgan (Hair), where she starred in the play and later film of Futz!, and featured in Paul Foster's Tom Paine and Melodrama Play by Sam Shepard.

"[3][4] Ellen Stewart and Tom O'Horgan invited Porter and her Scots husband Peter Reid to co-found the first foreign branch of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, based in the UK.

Porter featured in their plays, including Groupjuice, Little Mother by Ross Alexander,[5] The Hilton Keen Show,[6] Hump, a dramatization of the novel by David Benedictus.

Her television films include Blue Money, again with Tim Curry, and Pleasure (1994), part of the Alan Bleasdale Presents series.

Porter subsequently became a senior Web Producer for leading web-house Online Magic, part of the Omnicom Group, and she was asked to contribute to various web-related magazines including .net for Future Publishing.

[16][17] This was followed in 2014 by a collection of her original scripts and screenplays under the umbrella title Drama Queen[18] and in April 2016 of her autobiography entitled Walking on my Hands: how I learned to take responsibility for my life with the help of Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Greta Garbo, Harvey Milk, Idi Amin, Guy The Gorilla, and Frank Sinatra, among others.

[25] Her Amazon profile further stated that she was working on a collection of short and flash fiction featuring female protagonists for publication in early 2022, and was also preparing a new book promo website.