Adrienne Barbeau: 50+ Years Of Her Beautiful Life From 1973 To 2025

When you describe some­body as hav­ing an amaz­ing, incred­i­ble, or beau­ti­ful life, how much of it is usu­al­ly a throw­away line and how much of it is true? Well, in the case of actress Adri­enne Bar­beau, we’d say it has been pret­ty beau­ti­ful giv­en that she’s lived the life of a work­ing actress for the past 55 years. It start­ed with the orig­i­nal Broad­way run of Fid­dler on the Roof which led to the 1970s hit TV series Maude. And it has con­tin­ued to this day with such recent films as Big Leg­end and For the Love of Jessee, as well as guest-star­ring on tele­vi­sion series like Swamp Thing, Creepshow, and AJ and the Queen. Yep, sounds pret­ty beau­ti­ful to us.

She was born Adri­enne Jo Bar­beau on June 11, 1945, in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia, and it was there, accord­ing to what she wrote in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, that she first became intrigued with the idea of per­form­ing. It seems that she trav­eled with the San Jose Civic Light Opera to Army bases through­out South­east Asia to per­form for the troops and that that was the thing that would ulti­mate­ly bring her to New York in the mid-1960s.

Once in New York, she worked as a go-go dancer and by 1968 had made her way into Fid­dler on the Roof, first as a part of the cho­rus and then as a replace­ment for the char­ac­ters of Hodel and Brielle. In 1971 she played Cook­ie Kovac in the off-Broad­way “nudie musi­cal” Stag Movie, for which she was appar­ent­ly able to strip away her inhi­bi­tions for.

RELATED: 50 Fabulous Stars From The 70s Then And Now

What many may have for­got­ten at this point is the fact that in 1972 Adri­enne was back on Broad­way, only this time orig­i­nat­ing the part of Bet­ty Riz­zo in the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion of Grease (the part Stockard Chan­ning would play in the movie ver­sion six years lat­er). She would return again in 2006 play­ing Judy Gar­land in off-Broadway’s The Prop­er­ty Known as Gar­land and in 2014 as part of the nation­al tour­ing com­pa­ny of Pip­pin. In total, she’s been able to do about 25 musi­cals and plays.

And Then There’s ‘Maude’

Sat­is­fied with what she’d accom­plished on stage, she decid­ed to give tele­vi­sion a shot and end­ed up cast in Maude, an acclaimed, though con­tro­ver­sial, series. And while she enjoyed the mate­r­i­al, it grad­u­al­ly occurred to her that the attrib­ut­es being focused on weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly her act­ing tal­ents. “What I didn’t know,” she writes in the afore­men­tioned auto­bi­og­ra­phy, There Are Worse Thing I Could Do, “is that when I said my lines I was usu­al­ly walk­ing down a flight of stairs and no one was even lis­ten­ing to me. They were just watch­ing my breasts pre­cede me.”

Thanks to her suc­cess on Maude, Adri­enne found her­self mak­ing guest star appear­ances on many dif­fer­ent shows through­out her career, and star­ring in a lit­tle over two dozen made-for-TV movies. She made the leap to the big screen in the 1980 hor­ror film The Fog and found that that was a genre she would dip in and out of for years to come. Sub­se­quent roles would alter­nate from hor­ror to more com­ic, dra­mat­ic, sci­ence-fic­tion, thrillers, and more. She would even pro­vide her voice for auto­mat­ed devices in movies like Sylvester Stallone’s Demo­li­tion Man(1993) and Judge Dredd (1995).

Is Adrienne Barbeau Still Married?

One has to give Adri­enne cred­it for keep­ing her career diver­si­fied. She’s worked as a talk show host and a week­ly book review­er for Los Ange­les talk radio sta­tion KABC,  record­ed an album as a folk singer, has played dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in video games from 1999’s Descent 3 to 2018’s Fall­out 76, and she’s writ­ten a tril­o­gy of mys­tery hor­ror nov­els under the umbrel­la title Vampyres of Hol­ly­wood. In her per­son­al life, she was mar­ried to direc­tor John Car­pen­ter from 1979 to 1984 (they had a son, John Howard “Cody” Car­pen­ter). In 1992, she mar­ried producer/playwright/actor Bill Van Zandt, who was 12 years younger than she was, and the two of them were togeth­er until 2018. At age 51 in 1997, she gave birth to their twin sons, Walk­er Steven and William Dal­ton Van Zandt.

All of which rein­forces our firm belief that life of Adri­enne Bar­beau, 77, has been pret­ty beau­ti­ful, and to cel­e­brate it you can check out the fol­low­ing illus­trat­ed guide to her career.

1 of 42. ‘Maude’ (1972 to 1978)

Long before she played Dorothy on The Gold­en Girls, Bea Arthur first caught the audience’s atten­tion as Maude Find­ley, a char­ac­ter intro­duced as Edith Bunker’s cousin on All in the Fam­i­ly. This series — cre­at­ed by Nor­man Lear and Bud Yorkin — was born out of the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment of the era and was the demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­ter­bal­ance to Archie Bunker’s con­ser­vatism. Adri­enne is Maude’s daugh­ter, Car­ol Traynor, a sin­gle moth­er who ful­ly embraces her sex­u­al­i­ty and is like her moth­er in a lot of ways, though the two of them do end up butting heads a lot. Also star­ring is Bill Macy as Maude’s fourth hus­band, Wal­ter Find­lay. Por­tray­ing the next-door neigh­bors are Con­rad Bain (he to be of Diff’rent Strokes) and Rue McClana­han, who would, of course, join Bea on The Gold­en Girls. Inter­est­ing bit of triv­ia, in the world of spin-offs, Maude’s house­keep­er was Esther Rolle as Flori­da Evans, who would move on up (oh, wait, that was The Jef­fer­sons) to her own show, Good Times.

2 of 42. ‘The Great Houdini’ (1976 TV Movie)

A dra­mat­ic look at the life of escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni (played by Starsky and Hutch’s Paul Michael Glaser). Adri­enne is Daisy White, and her co-stars include Sal­ly Struthers, Bill Bix­by and Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy). That same year, Adri­enne appeared in the TV movie Julie, Farr, M.D., which inspired two sequels and a short-lived TV series. And then, in 1977 she starred in the Have I Got a Christ­mas for You TV movie.

3 of 42. ‘The Fighting Nightingales’ (1978 TV Movie)

This one has kind of got­ten lost in time giv­en that the only spin-offs we think of as hav­ing come out of M*A*S*H are After­MASH and Trap­per John, M.D. (though there’s no way we believe that Wayne Rogers grew up to be Per­nell Roberts — no way!). Well, col­or us stoopid, because Adri­enne was fea­tured as Major Kate Steele, one of a num­ber of nurs­es in an all-female unit assigned to the Kore­an War in this TV movie pilot. Also in 1978, she was fea­tured in the TV movies Crash and Someone’s Watch­ing Me (which is where she met first hus­band, direc­tor John Car­pen­ter), and, in 1979, The Dark­er Side of Ter­ror. 

4 of 42. ‘The Fog’ (1980)

A cen­tu­ry after a ship sank in the water off a small coastal town, a dead­ly fog of super­nat­ur­al ori­gins begins attack­ing the locals. How on Earth do you fight a fog? That’s what the cast (includ­ing Adri­enne as Ste­vie Wayne and Jamie Lee Cur­tis as Eliz­a­beth Sol­ley) has to fig­ure out. John Car­pen­ter writes and directs. In the same year, Adri­enne appeared in the TV movies Top of the Hill, Valen­tine Mag­ic on Love Island, and Tourist. 

5 of 42. ‘Escape from New York’ (1981)

In the (then) not-so-dis­tant future of 1997, Man­hat­tan Island has been turned into a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison, which just hap­pens to be the place the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States’ plane crash­es. Kurt Rus­sell as crim­i­nal Snake Plissken is sent him to res­cue him and has to fight his way through var­i­ous inmates. One of the peo­ple help­ing him to do is Adrienne’s Mag­gie, who’s armed with guns and some seri­ous atti­tude — almost feels like the time to make some sort of crack about Maude, Car­ol, and hor­mones, but that would be insen­si­tive, rude, and sex­ist and we’d like to thinkwe’re more enlight­ened than that.

6 of 42. ‘The Cannonball Run’ (1981)

Admit­ted­ly this is Burt Reynolds’ movie, but Adri­enne does man­age her moment to shine as Mar­cie, one of a group of par­tic­i­pants in an ille­gal cross-coun­try race who are pret­ty much will­ing to do any­thing they have to in order to win. In some ways, you can think of it as a live-action ver­sion of the old Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon Wacky Races. Co-stars include Far­rah Faw­cett, Dom Deluise, Sam­my Davis, Jr., and that era’s James Bond, Sir Roger Moore (before he was a “Sir”).

7 of 42. ‘Swamp Thing’ (1982)

Based on the DC Comics char­ac­ter of the same name, the film focus­es on sci­en­tist Alec Hol­land (played by Ray Wise), who, due to sab­o­tage in his lab­o­ra­to­ry, suf­fers through a ter­ri­ble acci­dent and is trans­formed into Swampy (our name, not theirs). Adri­enne is Alice Cable, a gov­ern­ment replace­ment at Alec’s lab who gets involved in a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with him before things go to hell.

8 of 42. ‘Creepshow’ (1982)

Best described as a hor­ror-com­e­dy, this is an anthol­o­gy of five sto­ries, all writ­ten by Stephen King and direct­ed by George A. Romero. In ‘The Crate,’ Adri­enne plays Wilma “Bil­lie” Northup, whose hus­band (Hal Hol­brook) manip­u­lates things so that she’s eat­en by an ape-like crea­ture freed from a mys­te­ri­ous … wait for it … crate. Look­ing for­ward to a peace­ful future, the indi­ca­tion is that the hus­band — Hen­ry Northup — is des­tined to join Bil­lie in the creature’s stom­ach. It’s why the word “hor­ror” is in the descrip­tion, ’cause that sounds pret­ty hor­ri­ble.

9 of 42. ‘Bridge Across Time,’ aka ‘Terror at London Bridge’ (1985 TV Movie)

When the last orig­i­nal stone is put into place on a rebuilt Lon­don Bridge, a series of mur­ders take place that police­man Don Gre­go­ry (David Has­sel­hoff) is con­vinced is the work of a res­ur­rect­ed Jack the Rip­per. Adri­enne is a char­ac­ter named Lynn Chan­dler while Step­fanie Kramer (who was star­ring on Hunter at the time) is Ang­ie. Yeah, we’re not real­ly famil­iar with this one either. In the same year, Adri­enne appeared in the TV movie Seduced, play­ing a sup­port­ing role to Gre­go­ry Har­ri­son and Cybill Shep­herd.

10 of 42. ‘Back to School’ (1986)

This is real­ly a Rod­ney Dan­ger­field vehi­cle as he plays Thorn­ton Mel­on, who thinks attend­ing his son’s col­lege will help them bond. The con­cept sounds con­trived, but it’s real­ly fun­ny and Adri­enne is par­tic­u­lar­ly shrewish as Thornton’s wife Vanes­sa, who’s affair­ing her­self right out of the mar­riage.

11 of 42. ‘Open House’ (1987)

Adri­enne is real estate agent Lisa Grant, whose life is in dan­ger when her boyfriend, psy­chol­o­gist Doc­tor David Kel­ley (Joseph Bot­toms) agrees to help the police track down a ser­i­al killer(played by Dar­wyn Swalve).

12 of 42. ‘Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death’ (1989)

C’mon, do you real­ly care what this one is about? Aren’t you just drawn in by the title? It’s the sort of thing where you’ve got to see what it is even though every fiber of your being is telling you not to. Wikipedia actu­al­ly describes it this way: “The film sends up many pop cul­ture motifs and soci­etal trends, includ­ing fem­i­nism, B movies, celebri­ties, writ­ers and polit­i­cal fig­ures, cen­tered around a spoof of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 nov­el Heart of Dark­ness” (which, inci­den­tal­ly was mod­ern­ized in 1979 as Apoc­a­lypse Now). Adri­enne is Dr. Kurtz, who is cap­tured by the “Piran­ha Women” and made their empress. She’s got to be res­cued or some­thing.

16 of 42. ‘Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island’ (1998)

Adri­enne pro­vid­ed her voice for vil­lain­ess Simone Lenoir, who threat­ens Scoo­by and the gang in this ani­mat­ed made-for-video movie. In the same year, she starred in the TV movie A Champion’s Fight.

17 of 42. ‘A Wake in Providence’ (1999)

Ah, there’s noth­ing like a funer­al to bring out the fun­ny in peo­ple — at least as far as Hol­ly­wood is con­cerned. In this case, it kicks off with Antho­ny bring­ing his black girl­friend Alis­sa to meet his fam­i­ly at his grandfather’s funer­al. What results is every­one con­fronting each oth­er and con­fess­ing secrets, while the cou­ple is try­ing to get away from the sit­u­a­tion so they can get mar­ried and start their life togeth­er. Adding to the fun is Adri­enne as “Aunt Lidia.”

28 of 42. ‘War Wolves’ (2009)

A group of sol­diers on a mis­sion in the Mid­dle East are ambushed. Return­ing home, they dis­cov­er some­thing has hap­pened to them and they are trans­form­ing into were­wolf-like beings. One of them (Michael Worth’s Jake Gabriel) attempts to hold on to his human­i­ty, but the oth­ers dis­agree with his plan. Adri­enne is Gail, a woman who helps Jake through his “chal­lenges.”

42 of 42. ‘Hellblazers’ (2022)

Set in the late 1980s, a satan­ic cult has a sin­gu­lar focus of unleash­ing hell on Earth. With the help of an ancient incan­ta­tion, they con­jure a demon, and its mem­bers are tasked with feed­ing it the pop­u­lous of a near­by small south­west­ern town. In addi­tion to Adri­enne, the film stars Bruce Dern, Bil­ly Zane, Tony Todd, John Kas­sir and Meg Fos­ter.