The voice seemed to come from somewhere deeper than ordinary speech.

Sultry, controlled and immediately recognizable, it eventually belonged to a Broadway rebel, a feminist television character, a late-night radio host and one of animation’s most unforgettable versions of Catwoman.

But before audiences knew that voice, its owner was a young California woman dancing inside a New York nightclub reportedly operated by the mob.

She had arrived in Manhattan with approximately $1,000, no established career and no guarantee that Broadway would ever open its doors.

She would ultimately conquer it.

Born in Sacramento, California, in 1945, she grew up with Armenian ancestry on her mother’s side and a father who worked for the Mobil Oil Company. Singing and performance attracted her early, and during college she joined a light-opera company that entertained American military personnel at bases throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Then she decided to take an enormous risk.

At 19, she moved alone to New York City. She packed her belongings into boxes and told her mother to send them once she found an address.

To survive, she answered a newspaper advertisement and began working at a nightclub. The establishment’s owner was reportedly connected to organized crime, and the young performer discovered that dancing brought in more money than waiting tables or serving drinks.

She became a go-go dancer.

The job was far from the distinguished stage career she imagined, but it placed her within walking distance of Broadway. She sold tickets, danced in clubs, studied and continued auditioning.

In 1968, the door finally opened.

She joined the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, beginning in the chorus before moving into the role of Hodel, one of Tevye’s daughters. Another future star, Bette Midler, appeared in the production as Hodel’s sister Tzeitel.

The two women were still years away from becoming famous.

Her real breakthrough arrived in 1972 with a new musical about teenagers, leather jackets and romance at a fictional 1950s high school.

She created the role of Betty Rizzo.

Tough, sarcastic and sexually experienced, Rizzo was the opposite of the innocent heroine audiences expected to lead a nostalgic high-school story. Beneath her insults and confidence, however, she carried fear, vulnerability and an awareness of how quickly society judged women.

Her defining number was “There Are Worse Things I Could Do.”

The performance earned her a Theatre World Award and a Tony nomination. Years before Stockard Channing played Rizzo in the famous film adaptation, this Broadway actress had already established the character’s emotional core.

Television producer Norman Lear noticed her.

He cast her as Carol Traynor, the divorced daughter of Bea Arthur’s outspoken title character in the groundbreaking sitcom Maude. Like her mother, Carol was intelligent, independent and willing to challenge traditional expectations about marriage, motherhood and women’s lives.

The role made the actress nationally recognizable.

From 1972 until 1978, she appeared regularly in American homes. Yet television success created an unexpected problem: Hollywood began assuming she could perform only comedy.

A young filmmaker helped change that perception.

She met director John Carpenter while working on his 1978 television thriller Someone’s Watching Me!. Their professional connection became romantic, and they married on New Year’s Day in 1979.

Carpenter had recently shocked audiences with Halloween.

For her first major theatrical film, he placed his wife inside another nightmare.

In The Fog, she played Stevie Wayne, a radio disc jockey broadcasting alone from a lighthouse while a supernatural fog carried the ghosts of murdered sailors into a coastal town. Much of the performance depended on her voice as she desperately warned residents of the approaching danger.

The film became a commercial success and transformed her into a horror star.

She returned to Carpenter’s dark universe in Escape from New York, playing Maggie, a resourceful woman attempting to survive inside a dystopian Manhattan converted into a maximum-security prison.

More genre roles followed.

In Swamp Thing, directed by Wes Craven, she played a government agent drawn into a bizarre world of scientific transformation. In George A. Romero’s Creepshow, she became the memorably abrasive Wilma—better known as “Billie”—in the segment about a monstrous creature discovered inside an old crate.

By the early 1980s, she had become a “scream queen,” although her characters were rarely passive victims. They fought, argued, made decisions and frequently possessed more courage than the men surrounding them.

She also appeared opposite Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run, where Hollywood’s fixation on her appearance sometimes overshadowed her abilities. A bestselling poster featuring her in a purple corset strengthened her status as a sex symbol.

Privately, her first marriage was ending.

She and Carpenter welcomed a son, Cody, in 1984, but separated and divorced that same year. Cody later became a musician and composer, collaborating professionally with his father.

The actress eventually met playwright and actor Billy Van Zandt while appearing in one of his stage productions. They married in 1992.

Then came one of the most unexpected chapters of her life.

In March 1997, when she was 51 and approaching her 52nd birthday, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Walker and William. She joked that she was the only new mother in the maternity ward eligible for AARP membership.

Rather than disappearing after middle age, she continued reinventing herself.

Her distinctive voice gave new life to Catwoman in Batman: The Animated Series. For many viewers, her performance became the definitive sound of the elegant and morally complicated Selina Kyle.

She appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Carnivàle, General Hospital and numerous other productions. She returned to the stage to portray Judy Garland and released a folk album.

She also became an author.

Her autobiography borrowed its title from Rizzo’s most famous song: There Are Worse Things I Could Do. She later wrote a series of novels beginning with Vampyres of Hollywood, playfully combining her literary ambitions with the genre that had sustained her screen career.

Her second marriage eventually ended, but her work continued across theater, television, movies, animation and books.

The young woman who had once danced in a mob-connected nightclub had refused to remain only one thing. She became a Broadway original, television feminist, horror survivor, animated femme fatale, author and mother who began raising twins when many performers were being told their most important years were behind them.

The woman who originated Rizzo in Grease, entered John Carpenter’s fog and gave Catwoman her unforgettable voice was Adrienne Jo Barbeau.