Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne began performing in 1963 with the San Jose Civic Light Opera and by 1965, she had already entertained our servicemen on army bases throughout South East Asia and was on her way to New York where she made her Broadway debut as Tevye's second daughter, Hodel, in Fiddler on the Roof. A Tony nomination for her creation of Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Grease led her back to California and the role of Bea Arthur's daughter, Carol, in the hit series Maude.

Since then she has become a best selling author, a recording artist, and the star of numerous features, films for television, concert performances, musicals and plays.

Genre film fans know her best for her performances in The Fog, Escape From New York, Creepshow, Swamp Thing, Back to School and Cannonball Run.

Her many films for television include the Ace Award winning Double Crossed: The Barry Seal Story opposite Dennis Hopper and Scott Turow's Burden of Proof with Hector Elizondo. Lifetime Network audiences can see her in the oft-repeated Shattered Hearts and Drew Carey fans know her as Oswald's mom. She starred as Ruthie, the Snake Dancer, on HBO's fascinating series, Carnivale.

Adrienne has starred in over 25 musicals and plays, among them Pump Boys & Dinettes; Women Behind Bars; Kander and Ebb's And the World Goes Round; The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; Love Letters; the West coast premieres of A Walk on the Wild Side and Drop Dead; the Canadian premiere of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers; and the world premiere of What the Rabbi Saw by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Most recently she returned to Off-Broadway and standing ovations as Judy Garland in The Property Known As Garland.

Off camera, Adrienne is the voice of Catwoman in Batman, The Animated Series, Ms. Simone in Scooby-Do on Zombie Island, and Scooter's Mom in the 3-D animated film Fly Me To The Moon, premiering in August, 2008. The feature film Reach For Me, in which she stars with Seymour Cassell, Alfre Woodard, and LeVar Burton, is awaiting release. At present, she is filming WarWolves for the SciFi Network.

Adrienne's memoir There Are Worse Things I Could Do (Carroll and Graf Publishers) is an L.A. Times best seller. Her first novel, Vampyres of Hollywood, which she co-authored with Michael Scott for St. Martin's Press, comes out in August, 2008. She is currently at work on the sequel.

In March of 1997, Adrienne gave birth to identical twin boys making her "the only woman on the maternity ward that was a member of AARP". She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Billy Van Zandt, the twins, William and Walker, and her older son, Cody.

- Biography © Adrienne Barbeau