Adrienne King

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

In 1979, while King was appearing in a commercial for Burger King, she was referred to producer Sean S. Cunningham through a mutual friend for a role in his directorial debut, the horror film Friday the 13th. Cunningham, impressed by King's naturalistic acting, felt she embodied the qualities of the film's lead heroine, Alice Hardy, and cast her in the film. Friday the 13th was a major box-office success, grossing nearly $60 million worldwide. The following year, she reprised her role as Alice Hardy in the sequel Friday the 13th Part 2, in which the character meets her demise during the film's opening sequence. King's character of Alice has been retrospectively assessed as a "standardization" of the "final girl" template in slasher films following the Laurie Strode character in Halloween (1978).

In Their Own Story

After the release of Friday the 13th and during the shooting of Friday the 13th Part 2, King was repeatedly harassed by a male stalker, which led her to recede from the public. The man took Polaroid photographs of King that he would slip under the door of her New York City apartment, and at one point, broke into her apartment and defaced her artwork. On one occasion, the man confronted her in her apartment and held a gun to her head. The assailant was apprehended and spent some time imprisoned, but the incident traumatized King, prompting her to leave the public eye for many years. Reflecting on the incident in a 2016 interview, King said: "It kind of changed the game for me, because instead of thinking of my next move I was thinking about staying alive. Back in 1980, it was quite the endeavour. Think about it: there were no cellphones, very few video cameras around. I was getting Polaroids under my door of what I had been doing the night before. Of course, having no laws against stalking at the time—not until [1990] when poor Rebecca Schaeffer was killed by one of her fans—I was basically [dealing with this] alone."

Reader's Guide

King relocated to London in 1984, where she enrolled for a summer program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, studying voice and dance. Upon finishing her studies, she returned to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. Reluctant to appear onscreen, King reemerged doing voice acting and ADR work, first for Mel Gibson's The Man Without a Face, and the Lasse Hallström-directed drama What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (both 1993). She continued to provide voice work for numerous Hollywood productions throughout the 1990s, including Philadelphia (1993), The Pelican Brief (1993), Wolf (1994), Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996), and James Cameron's Titanic (1997). She would later state: "Voiceover work saved me. There's no question it came all around full circle, and I'm a better, more compassionate and stronger actor and artist."

In 2008, King was inducted into the Horror Hall of Fame at the Phoenix Film Festival. In 2010, she returned to acting in the low-budget horror film Psychic Experiment. King followed this with roles in The Butterfly Room (2012), Tales of Poe (2014), Killer Therapy (2019), and the Friday the 13th fan film Jason Rising (2021). In 2023, King was attached to the forthcoming Peacock series, Crystal Lake, a prequel series to the original 1980 film, though the series remains in development as of 2025.

Did You Know?

• King was placed in commercials by her mother beginning at six months old, with her first appearance in a commercial for Ivory soap.
• She studied and graduated from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology with a degree in fine arts.
• King worked as a dancer in the films Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Hair (1979).
• She married Robert Tuckman on November 29, 1981, and later married Richard Hassanein, founder of United Film Distributors, in 1987.
• Since 2005, she has resided with her husband in Oregon's Rogue Valley.