In 1945, one of entertainment’s most versatile stars was born in Sacramento. Adrienne Barbeau celebrates the big 8-1 today, more than 55 years after launching a career that would jump from the stage to the screen to the page.
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A multi-hyphenate singer, actor, author, and voice actor, Barbeau became a household name in the 1970s. But before fans called her by her birth name, they knew her best as simply Rizzo.
View this post on InstagramYep! Barbeau played the very first Betty Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Grease, showcasing her singing and stage acting chops. Originating the now-iconic role when the musical opened at the Eden Theatre in February 1972, she became widely recognized for her stellar solo of "There Are Worse Things I Could Do.”
Her raunchy, unapologetic take on the Pink Lady (embodied later on the big screen by Stockard Channing) earned Barbeau a Tony Award nomination.
Before Grease, Barbeau cut her teeth go-go dancing and traveling the globe in a musical comedy review for the U.S. Army bases across Southeast Asia. Her stage debut was in Fiddler on the Roofplaying Hodel in 1971. She then moved on to star as Cookie Kovac in the off-Broadway nudie musicalStag Movie. According to her biography, she’s appeared in more than 25 plays and musicals.
For her second act, Barbeau moved to the small screen, starring as Carol Traynor on the groundbreaking 1970s sitcomMaude. A spin-off from the crazy-popular All in the Family, Barbeau played the divorced daughter of Bea Arthur’s Maude, cousin of Edith Bunker. The show won a Primetime Emmy in 1977.
Barbeau later cemented herself as a 1980s genre icon in cult-classic films; we’ll call this her Scream Queen Era. Starring in classics likeThe Fog (1980), Escape From New York (1981), Creepshow (1982), and Swamp Thing (1982), she established herself a scream queen legend. She even married master of horror John Carpenter in 1979. They divorced five years later, but Barbeau has nothing but fond memories of the horror auteur.
“People talk about The Fog all the time,” she said recently on The Jim Masters Show. “There’s a whole new generation of people who have discovered The Fog. They may not know Maude … but they know The Fog, and they know Escape From New York.”
Also a celebrated voice actor, Barbeau has been able to reach a whole new generation of fans by providing the sultry, iconic voice of Catwoman (Selina Kyle) in the critically acclaimedBatman: The Animated Series (1992–1995) and in major video games like Starfield.
Some of her other more recent projects include playing Ruthie the snake dancer on HBO's Carnivàle (2003–2005), as well as parts on Revenge(2012-2015), Duster (2025), Harlan Coben'sShelter (2023), and 9-1-1 (2023).
Beyond the stage and screen, Barbeau has become quite the writer. A New York Times bestselling author, she published her memoir, There Are Worse Things I Can Do, in 2006. She has also co-written several novels, including Vampyres of Hollywood (2008).
Currently, Barbeau is promoting her new film, Oddities, which premiered at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival in Belgium on April 14.
Still out there acting and advocating, this icon and mom of three shows no signs of slowing down, even at 81. With four distinct careers in the books — Broadway star, sitcom gem, horror icon, voice legend — we’d like to add a fifth: absolute delight. Watch her do the “Hippy Hippy Shake” and you’ll see what we mean.
Happy birthday, Adrienne!
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