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Adrienne King

Adrienne King’s career reaches well beyond the role that made her a familiar face to horror audiences. Born on July 21, 1960, in Long Island, King began appearing in commercials as a baby, with an Ivory soap advertisement among her earliest work. She later trained under acting teacher Bill Esper while taking parts in soap operas, Off-off-Broadway productions and television advertising. She also graduated from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology with a fine arts degree. Before stepping into a leading role, King worked as a dancer in Saturday Night Fever and Hair and had a small supporting part in Between the Lines. Her defining screen turn came as Alice Hardy in Friday the 13th. Cast for the naturalistic quality producer-director Sean S. Cunningham saw in her acting, King brought a grounded, watchful presence to the film’s lead heroine. She returned briefly as Alice in the opening of Friday the 13th Part 2. After being repeatedly harassed by a stalker, King withdrew from public-facing screen work. She appeared as a stunt performer and background actor in Ghostbusters, then studied voice and dance during a summer program at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Back in the United States, she built a substantial career in voice acting and ADR, contributing to productions including What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Philadelphia, The Pelican Brief, Wolf, Jerry Maguire and Titanic. King returned to onscreen film acting with Psychic Experiment, an experience that made her realize how much she had missed performing. Further horror work followed, including Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming, The Butterfly Room and All American Bully. In 2021, she revisited Alice Hardy in the fan film Jason Rising and narrated the audiobook of Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group. Acting is only one part of King’s creative life. She is also a painter and has worked in winemaking, selling her artwork alongside a Friday the 13th-themed line called Crystal Lake Wines. It is a varied career, but the connecting thread is clear: performance and art have remained central, whether she is in front of a camera, behind a microphone or working on a canvas.