EXCLUSIVETV sitcom star and film scream queen Adrienne Barbeau, 79, looks fabulous in rare sighting strutting about LA in red cowboy boots

Best known for her role as Bea Arthur’s daughter in the iconic 70’s TV sitcom Maude, Adrienne Barbeau was spotted this week strutting down the streets of Los Angeles wearing a pair of red cowboy boots. 

The 79-year-old actress has kept her familiar short, blown-out brown hair – and her figure.

Barbeau continues to maintain the body that turned heads throughout her time on Maude, a spin-off of All in the Family, and the cult-classic horror movies she was known for in the 80s.

Holding a tan tote bag and a maroon carry-on bag, she appeared to be returning from a trip.

Along with her flashy boots, the actress also wore a gray sweater with a playful variation of red chevron stripes and a light-washed pair of jeans as she walked to her red vehicle.    

Barbeau described getting the acting ‘bug’ when she dropped out of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, in favor of joining the San Jose Light Opera.

While performing as a dancer at various army bases to entertain troops throughout Southeast Asia, she made the decision to try to make it big in New York City in the mid-1960s.

Barbeau danced at a discotheque-style club as a go-go dancer who worked ‘for the mob,’ as she described in her autobiography There Are Worse Things I Could Do.

She then tried her hand at Broadway, starring in the 1968 play Fiddler On The Roof, first as part of the chorus and then stepping up as a replacement for the characters Hodel and Bielke.

Barbeau would become a sex symbol when she starred as Cookie Kovac in the 1971 off-Broadway nudie musical Stag Movie, strutting around naked on stage.

It took 25 musicals for Barbeau to finally achieve acclaim when she won the role of Rizzo in Grease, which won her a Theatre World Award and a 1972 Tony Award nomination.

When she landed the role of Carol Traynor on the TV comedy series Maude in 1972, she won the hearts of America.

Barbeau wrote in her autobiography: ‘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.’

Barbeau described the experience on set as ‘sheer fun’ and deeply respected Arthur for her warm personality and teamwork – saying years later that her comedy chops were learned from the veteran comedian.

‘There are still times when I hear Bea’s delivery coming out of my mouth,’ the bombshell told Closer Weekly in a 2019 interview.

In 1978, the actress released a cheesecake poster – photos of pin-up girls that grew in popularity post-1940s. It featured Barbeau front-facing with satin lace lingerie and pinned-up, messy hair which solidified her status as a sex symbol.

Barbeau met horror filmmaker John Carpenter on the set of his television film Someone’s Watching Me in 1978. They married a year later. 

She would appear in his cult-classic films The Fog (1980) and Escape from New York (1981).

After proving herself to be a horror genre star, Barbeau acted in Creepshow (1982) and Swamp Thing (1982).

Carpenter and Barbeau had their son Cody but separated shortly after in 1984, divorcing the following year.

Barbeau would remarry producer, screenplay writer and actor Billy Van Zandt, who she met after she was cast in his play Drop Dead! The pair would marry in 1982 and Barbeau gave birth to twins Walker Steven and William Dalton, a producer and multi-instrumentalist, at age 52 in 1997.

They would file for divorce in 2018.

Flaunting around in a pink skin-tight suit, Barbeau also starred in the Burt Reynolds comedy The Cannonball Run (1981) as the driver of a two-door 1979 Lamborghini Countach coupe.

In the opening scene, Barbeau and Tara Buckman speed down a highway as they’re chased by police, before being pulled over and raising the ‘scissor doors’ up – this was one of the first glimpses of this exotic sports car for Americans.

That same car would be added to the National Historic Vehicle Register in 2021.

After the 1980s, Barbeau tried her hand at becoming a television talk show host and a weekly book reviewer for KABC talk radio in Los Angeles.

She guest-starred in shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, appeared in made-for-television films such as The Burden of Proof (1982) and began dabbling in voice acting such as Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series and Gotham Girls.

Most recently, she appeared in Argo (2012), reappeared on the theater stage as Berthe in Pippin in 2015 and voiced Sally Jupiter in Watchman Chapters 1 and 2 in 2024.

Barbeau still resides in the Los Angeles area and often posts photos of her sons and dogs on her Instagram.