Barbeau has enjoyed a long career across television, film and stage
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NEED TO KNOW
- Adrienne Barbeau reflected on her decades-long career during an emotional interview on the Famous podcast
- She gained fame in the 1970s as Betty Rizzo in Broadway’s Grease and on the sitcom Maude
- Barbeau starred in 1980s horror and sci-fi films like The Fog and Swamp Thing
Adrienne Barbeau is looking back on her lengthy career — one she says she feels “blessed” to have had.
Speaking on the Famous podcast with Jacy Dawn Valeras, the 81-year-old actress grew emotional as she shared, “I just can’t believe that I have had this career that I’ve had.”
Barbeau rose to fame in the 1970s as the original Betty Rizzo in the Broadway musical Grease, and as Carol Traynor, the divorced daughter of Maude Findlay (played by Bea Arthur) on the sitcom Maude.
In the 1980s, she transitioned to film, often appearing in horror and science fiction movies, such as 1980’s The Fog and 1982’s Swamp Thing.
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Credit: Alamy
“To be really honest, you know, I look at major film stars and think, well, you know, I’ve never had that kind of a career,” Barbeau said on the podcast. “But I’ve been incredibly blessed. Whether it’s luck, whether it’s fortune, whether it’s blessing, whatever it is, to just be at this time in my life and to be having people who want to ask me questions.”
The Tony and Golden Globe Award nominee added that, due to her acting success, she’s “never had to take a day job.”
“I’ve been able to do this for a living for more than 60 years,” she added.
After starting in community theater, Barbeau got her first paying job.
“A week after I turned 18, I went with the musical comedy review to Southeast Asia entertaining the armed forces. It was my first paying job,” she shared. “It was a life-changing experience. And when I say it was my first paying job, we got $7 a day, you know, but we got to eat in the officer’s mess and see the world.”
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Later, she moved to New York, took voice lessons, and began auditioning for Broadway shows.
She landed a role in Fiddler on the Roof with Bette Midler.
Later, after transitioning from Broadway to TV, she made the leap to film.
“Right as we finished Maude, I had done a lot of television and a lot of TV movies and miniseries and everything and I was called in for an interview with a young director who was just getting a name for himself named John Carpenter,” she shared. “And John had written and was directing a film for television for Warner Brothers. It was his first union film.”
That meeting would lead to her role in Carpenter’s 1978 made-for-TV film, Someone’s Watching Me! and her first film role, in The Fog.
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