Nancy Barrett

**Nancy Barrett** is an American television and film actress, possibly best known for the role of Carolyn Stoddard on the iconic Sixties television series, "Dark Shadows."

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana on October 5, 1943, she grew up in Oklahoma putting on shows in her backyard with her sister, Martha. She later attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she met NY director Ivan Rider, who was then working as a drama professor, considering him one of the greatest influences on her early years on stage.

After her second year at Baylor, Nancy spent a summer in Los Angeles amd starred in a production of "Little Mary Sunshine." She later transferred to UCLA, where she graduated a year later. She went on to play the lead in "The Fantasticks" with Bill Bixby, later moving to New York City where she made her Broadway debut in "Pickwick" along with future "Monkee" Davy Jones and Charlotte Rae of "Facts of Life" fame.

Having married and divorced by 1966, Nancy also worked as a model, appearing in magazines such as "Good Housekeeping." Her first television appearance was in "The Takers" for the "The DuPont Show of the Week" and in the TV series, "N.Y.P.D." In 1965, she auditioned for the role of Victoria Winters in the daytime Gothic drama, "Dark Shadows," but she instead recieved the role of vivacious and flirtacious Carolyn Stoddard, the daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch, played by screen legend Joan Bennett. Ironically, she had worked with Bennett, before "Dark Shadows" on a television commercial. Meanwhile, the series became hugely popular with the appearance of repentant vampire Barnabas Collins and gained huge cult status afterward. Much like the rest of the cast, she showed off incredible dramatic talent playing alternate characters in other time periods of the show, creating the characters of Millicent Collins, Charity Trask, Leticia Faye, Amanda Collins, and Melanie Collins as well as an alternate reality version of Carolyn Stoddard. She also recreated Carolyn Stoddard in the big budget motion picture version, "House of Dark Shadows" and the new role of Claire Jenkins in "Night of Dark Shadows" in its sequel. Her appearance of Carolyn as a vampire in "House of Dark Shadows" was an iconic horror image for horror fans through the Seventies.

Beautiful, blonde and attractive, Barrett starred in stage performances of Neil Simon's "The Star-Spangled Girl" and "The Physicists" during her breaks from the show. Intimate with her "Dark Shadows" cast members, she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of cast member Alexandra Moltke and was briefly married to cast member David Ford, who she confessed she mostly respected for his talent. One of only three actors to have stayed with the show during its entire run, she went on to roles on "One Life to Live" and recurring roles in "The Doctors" and "Ryan's Hope." She also starred in the mini-series "The Adams Chronicles" and the film "Belizaire the Cajun" with Armand Assante and Robert Duvall, her last acting job to date.

Barrett eventually married Dr. Harold Kaplan, a prominent New York psychiatrist, and stayed married to him until his death in 1997. Before his death, he got a chance to see her fulfill a dream to perform a one-woman show, "As If We Never Said Good-bye," at the annual Dark Shadows Festival in New York City in August 1997. She has since performed similar shows at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and on tour through the Midwest.

During the holiday season of 1999, Nancy made her ballet debut in a production of "The Nutcracker." She was also in the planning stages of a music CD planned to be completed in early 2003. By December 2005, she was married for the fourth time to Dr. Stuart Shepard Leichter.