She attended Brandywine High School, participating in theater arts productions, including The King and I, in which she sang and acted the lead role of Anna.
Upon graduating in 1972, she received a call from her agent, who had secured an audition for her in a new MGM motion picture based on Sue Grafton's 1969 novel The Lolly-Madonna War.
"[8] And author/essayist Harlan Ellison, who called Lolly-Madonna "one of the most obstinately compelling films I've ever seen," singled out her performance as "skillful and highly promising of a long and honorable career.
The rape scene...is a directorial and acting masterpiece; Ms. Goodfellow manages to convey all the terror and bravery of a bird stalked by ruthless hunters.
Craving some form of acknowledgement from her high-school peers, the quiet, introverted Billie accedes to nocturnal liaisons with sex-starved male classmates.
"[13] Set in 1948 rural Georgia, this sentimental, ironic story of how the outcast Billie and the popular Buster Lane (Jan-Michael Vincent) fall in love became a surprise box-office hit during the summer of 1974, when it played mostly in small-city venues before making its New York premiere in late August.
"[17] And another local scribe asserted: Joan's work in a difficult role, where meaningful gestures and expressions rather than crisp readings of lines are required, is just plain excellent.
"[18]However, when a Philadelphia theater chain asked Columbia to pay Goodfellow's transportation costs for a promotional tour, the studio showed no interest.
[19] Still, during a time when she was enjoying critical recognition, Goodfellow celebrated a personal milestone with her marriage to country music composer and performer Daniel Faircloth in June 1974.
This phase of Goodfellow's career began with her third Daniel Petrie film, a TV-movie remake of the Academy Award-winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), entitled Returning Home (1975).
Then later in 1975, Goodfellow performed the minor role of a Brooklyn woman who barely escapes an attempted rape/murder in the TV-movie Death Scream, based on the Kitty Genovese murder case of 1964.
[25] In 1979, she appeared in the TV-movie, Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill, a series of character vignettes, all taking place in a country road house on a rainy evening.
[26] Yet many notable performers wandered back and forth through various scenes, including Dennis Quaid, Tanya Tucker, Candy Clark, Sheree North, and Henry Gibson.
She delivers an emotional ballad,[27] the lyrics explaining why her character, a girl-next-door waitress obsessed with soap operas and mood rings, harbors a crush for a short-tempered roustabout, played by Don Johnson.
About this time, Goodfellow, living in West Los Angeles with her 3-year-old son, was divorced from her husband, who would later move to Nashville to continue his songwriting and performing career.
[28] In 1981, after completing work in a feminist-themed sports TV-movie, The Oklahoma City Dolls, she played a "blonde bombshell" nurse named BeeBee Darnell in an episode of the Peter Cook situation comedy The Two of Us.
But one of her more notable appearances occurred when casting director Judy Courtney, who had seen Goodfellow audition for a part in Tootsie (1982), urged her to test for a new movie, A Flash of Green,[29] based on a John D. MacDonald novel about small-town political corruption.
[30]After brief work in the TV soap opera One Life to Live, Goodfellow was cast as understudy for the role of Rowena, a Southern prostitute, in Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues in 1985.
[34] In late 1993, she obtained a part in a small independent film, appearing as one of two evil stepsisters in Sharon Baker's never-released updating of the Cinderella story, relocated to a karaoke bar.
[35] Additionally, she performed in The Student Prince at Wilmington's Grand Opera House in 1997; she was cited as acting "the nonsinging role of a class-conscious duchess.