Priscilla Barnes

The stigma of the shared apartment

In 1981 Priscilla Barnes walked onto a set that was a minefield. She had to replace Suzanne Somers on Three’s Company, and the American audience was in no mood for jokes. The press immediately labeled her the group's new blonde, but she only wanted a steady paycheck.

The actress joined a series where the leads didn't even speak to each other off camera. The producers wanted an exact replica of the previous character to avoid losing viewers. And Barnes fulfilled her contract even though the work environment was toxic.

That was three years of torture.

Barnes never hid her contempt for the dynamics of that sitcom. In several later interviews she admitted that it was the worst period of her professional career because of the lack of creative freedom. But that Terri Alden role gave her the visibility she needed to break into big-budget films.

Before her television contract ended, she was already looking for projects that would move her away from the innocent girl-next-door image. She wanted roles with more weight and fewer canned laughs. So she used her departure from ABC to redefine her image in the Hollywood industry.

From Bond girl to B movies

In 1989 she got the chance to join one of the most profitable franchises in history. She appeared in Licence to Kill as Della Churchill. She worked alongside Timothy Dalton in an installment that aimed for a much darker and more violent tone than usual.

Barnes survived the television of the eighties.

Her time in the James Bond universe didn't make her a top-tier superstar, but it allowed her to work steadily. During the 1990s she specialized in independent productions and genre films. Because Barnes understood early on that the real money was in consistency and not in big summer releases.

In 1995, she took part in Mallrats under the direction of Kevin Smith. Playing a three-nippled psychic was a risky move for someone coming from commercial television. But the gamble paid off, and she won the respect of a new generation of viewers who had not even seen her earlier series.

Her ability to laugh at her own image was key to staying active. She didn't mind shooting in rough conditions if the script had a touch of madness or mean-spirited humor. That attitude led her straight to work with directors who wanted familiar faces to subvert audience expectations.

Refuge in Cult Cinema

Rob Zombie called her in 2005 to join the cast of The Devil’s Rejects. In this horror film she plays a mother who suffers a brutal fate at the hands of a family of psychopaths. It was a raw performance that definitively moved her away from any trace of lighthearted comedy.

Many critics were surprised to see her in such a physical and unpleasant role. But Barnes always preferred the mud of intense shoots to the comfort of air-conditioned television studios. In 2008 she returned to horror with Trailer Park of Terror, proving she felt at home on the fringes of the industry.

Barnes never stopped working for lack of offers.

In 2017, she took part in The Last Movie Star alongside Burt Reynolds, a project that paid tribute to the cinema of another era. It was an emotional shoot where she reconnected with the old codes of the profession. And in 2020, she joined the cast of Extraction, directed by Waymon Boone.

The actress has kept a low profile in the media over the past decade. She prefers to live away from the spotlight of Los Angeles and choose small projects that let her enjoy the craft without the pressure of audiences. In 2023, she voiced a character in the animated production The Adventures of Bunny Bravo.