Actors - Adrienne Barbeau

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	Actors - Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne Jo Barbeau (born June 11, 1945) is an American television, film, and musical theater actress. She is perhaps best known for starring in a number of early 1980s horror and science fiction films.

Early life

Barbeau was born in Sacramento, California to a French-Canadian father and an Armenian-American mother; she has a sister, Jocelyn Jo. During her late teenage years, Barbeau attended Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, sang with the San Jose Civic Light Opera, and performed for soldiers on army bases in Southeast Asia.

Career

In the late 1960s, Barbeau moved to New York City and worked as a Go-Go dancer, before making her Broadway debut in Fiddler on the Roof
, playing Tevye's daughter, Hodel. She has since starred in over 25 musicals and plays, among them Pump Boys & Dinettes, Women Behind Bars, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
, and Grease, as tough-girl Rizzo, for which she won a Theater Guild award and received a 1972 Tony Award nomination. During the 1970s, Barbeau had a thriving career on television, first appearing as the daughter of Bea Arthur's character on the series, Maude. She was subsequently cast in a large number of made-for-television films and made guest appearances on numerous shows, including The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Despite her initial success, she said at the time that she thought of Hollywood as a "flesh market", and that she would rather appear in films that "explore the human condition" and "deal with issues".

Barbeau was then cast by her then-husband, director John Carpenter, in one of the lead roles of his 1980 horror film, The Fog
, which was her first theatrical film appearance. She commented, "I think 'Maude' got everyone thinking I could only play comic women's libbers. So in my TV work after 'Maude,' I did only drama. Now maybe 'The Fog' will help people think of me as slightly more versatile." and establishing Barbeau as a genre film star. She subsequently appeared in a number of early 1980s horror and science fiction films, a number of which have now become cult classics, including Creepshow
and Swamp Thing
. She also appeared in the high-grossing comedy, The Cannonball Run.

Throughout the remainder of the 1980s, Barbeau mostly starred in low-budget, direct-to-video films, like the spoof Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
, co-starring Bill Maher. In 1986, she starred as "The Librarian" in Tomes & Talismans, a thirteen-episode library skills series presented as a dramatic science-fiction serial story. In the 1990s, Barbeau mostly appeared in made-for-television films, as well as played Oswald's mother on The Drew Carey Show and voiced Catwoman on Batman: the Animated Series. In 1999, she guest starred in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges". From 2003 to 2005, she starred on the HBO series Carnivale.

In 1998, Barbeau released her debut album as a folk singer, Adrienne Barbeau. Her autobiography, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, will be released in March 2006.

Private life

Barbeau was married to director John Carpenter from January 1, 1979 to 1984; the two met on the set of his 1978 television movie, Someone's Watching Me! and Barbeau later appeared in his films, "The Fog" and Escape from New York
. The couple have a son, John Cody (born May 7, 1984). During their marriage, the couple remained "totally outside Hollywood's social circles".

Barbeau married her current husband, Billy Van Zandt, in 1994. She gave birth to twins, Walker Steven and William Dalton, on March 11, 1997.

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Actors - Adrienne Barbeau

Early life

Career

Private life

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