Eugene Weekly : Books : 08.17.06

From Rizzo to AARP Momma

BY MOLLY TEMPLETON

THERE ARE WORSE THINGS I COULD DO, memoir by Adrienne Barbeau. Carroll & Graf, 2006. Hardcover, $25.

Actress Adrienne Barbeau has had a long and varied career, from originating the role of Rizzo in Grease on Broadway in the 1970s to a turn as Ruthie the snake-dancer on HBO's "Carnivàle" in 2003. She had a major role on "Maude," with Bea Arthur, and appeared in a handful of films by horror director John Carpenter, whom she also married. At 51 she gave birth to twins; she quips, in her new memoir, that she was "the only woman on the maternity ward who was a member of AARP."

Barbeau's memoir covers just about everything a fan would want to know about an actress: how she started, the determination of the early years, the first good roles, the roles she got later, as she grew older. But Barbeau lets on early that though she's kept a journal since she was very young, she wrote mostly about her relationships and hardly at all about her work. In that case, her memory must be a remarkable thing: There are stories aplenty about her best-known projects and, in a dryly humorous chapter, a film she refers to only as "the rat movie." Her personal life sounds familiar notes, but the crisp details about the sometimes strange life of a television and film actress are at times fascinating. Though Barbeau doesn't get technical, she does give a good sense of just how much work, done by how many people, is required to get a film made. What she doesn't give is a sense of immediacy. Barbeau's writing is plain and straightforward; she's light on description and when she writes about emotionally affecting moments, their weight is sometimes lessened by the simplicity of her style. Still, as Barbeau downplays the excitement of starring in a film, she succeeds at presenting herself as a warm, considerate woman whose job was her dream —doing it just happened to put her in front of thousands of people.