An industry veteran with over 40 years of experience in theatre, television and screen, Adrienne Barbeau was in attendance at the 2011 Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Like several actors at the Expo, she’s known for one or two main roles (Carol Traynor on Maude, DJ Stevie Wayne from The Fog, Marcie from Cannonball Run) yet she has played many different roles on TV shows like Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Carnivàle, Babylon 5, The Drew Carey Show and in movies like Escape from New York, Creepshow and Swamp Thing.
However, many people remember her as a sex symbol, which she finds a little baffling. "...If you look at my body of work, I never did play a sex symbol – certainly Maude wasn’t, or The Fog, or ...Escape". In her autobiography, There Are Worse Things I Could Do, she stated about working on Maude: "What I didn’t know 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."
Despite this, Adrienne told me she doesn’t feel like she has been chosen for roles because of her twin assets. Even in Maude they didn’t cast her for that, she explained: They cast her because they saw someone who could stand up to Bea’s character, be funny without being abrasive, and have a different approach to comedy than Bea Arthur.
Adrienne did concede that in her experience, many actors do carry parts of their own persona into their roles. If you try to cast them for something too different, it may simply not work. She told me she once got offered a character role of "...an older lady, a mom, you just knew she had white hair she dyed every week, and she served cookies, and she called everybody dear and honey, and I said to the casting director, I can do this, but I don’t think it’s going to be what you want...I’m going to have a little more bite. I wouldn’t have been as good as somebody who IS that character."
As someone who has had decades of experience, Adrienne has seen movies that she acted in, remade for today’s audience, to which she’s a bit ambivalent. "If they remake it and remake it well, I’m all for it. What I hear is that too often they are remaking them because they think they can make a dollar, and maybe because they’re afraid to take a chance on something [that hasn’t been seen before]." We discussed movies she saw and enjoyed from the 1950s that she would love to see reintroduced and remade for a new generation, for the fact that they were good stories.
Besides the roles on TV, movies, theatre or even animation, Adrienne is also a novelist, having written an autobiography and two fiction novels: Vampyres of Hollywood and Love Bites. Her Vampyres universe features a "scream queen" who owns a small film studio in Hollywood, as one of the main characters. She was the writer and star of several blockbuster horror films, not to mention she’s a 450 year old vampire and leader of the Vampyres of Hollywood at that. The clan includes the likes of Orson Welles, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Rudy Valentino.
In Vampyres of Hollywood, someone is killing members of her clan, so she has to join forces with a Beverly Hills detective who doesn’t realize she’s a vampire.
In the sequel (which can be read as a standalone novel), Love Bites, the vampire’s relationship with the detective takes a more intimate turn and her personal assistant...isn’t too happy about it. Throw into the mix, murder attempts on the vampire and the detective. Adrienne described it as just a fun vampire mystery love story, and an entertaining series of books. Several readers on Amazon.com seem to agree.
Of course, saving the best for last, I did ask her about her experiences with Bea Arthur; and of the late actress, Adrienne had nothing but praise. "[Bea] was incredibly professional...because Maude was my first television show, I had nothing to compare it to. All of us in Maude came from the New York theatre, so we all had the same approach to doing the work. It wasn’t until years later when I started doing other series...I realized how lucky we were to be working with Bea because she was the penultimate professional. She was so giving as an actor and often times when we would be doing a read-through, Bea would be the one who would say, you know, this line might be funnier if Adrienne said it, or Conrad said it. She was extremely giving, the first one to jump up from the table and welcome a guest artist. You don’t find that in today’s rehearsal room, oftentimes."
As someone who grew up through the 70s and the 80s, I share in longing for that sort of attitude, which is why I think many fans love seeing these veteran actors playing main roles in TV shows or in movies. We often see too much of the on-screen and off-screen antics of young actors, while the older actors get relegated to parental or support roles. But some of us crave the gravitas that veteran performers bring to their work. So here’s to seeing more of the amazing skills of actors like Adrienne Barbeau, Betty White, or Edward James Olmos – and not just the interchangeable younger actors that outnumber them a thousand to one.
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Contributor Evan Kayne |
Person Adrienne Barbeau |
Topic Calgary Expo | Celebrity Interview | Comic Expo |
