P.J. Soles, ‘Carrie and Halloween’ Star: Where Is ’70s Scream Queen Now?

In the late ’70s, when horror movies exploded in popularity, P.J. Soles was one of the reigning scream queens. Soles rose to prominence thanks to her roles in the genre classics Carrie and Halloween, and branched out into comedy with parts in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, Private Benjamin and Stripes.

Now 74, Soles has continued to act since that heyday, often in low-budget films and films that pay homage to her classic performances. Here’s a look at her long career and what she’s been up to in more recent years.

How P.J. Soles became the horror movie It Girl

Pamela Jayne Soles was born in Frankfurt, Germany to an American mother and Dutch father in 1950, and lived around the world growing up thanks to her dad’s job with an international insurance company. She moved to the U.S. to attend college, and a visit to the Actor’s Studio in New York sparked an interest in acting. Soon enough, she dropped out of school, got an agent, and began modeling and appearing in commercials.

Soles got her big break when she attended a joint casting session held by George Lucas and Brian De Palma for two of the biggest films of the decade: Star Wars and Carrie. She auditioned for the role of Princess Leia that ultimately went to Carrie Fisher, but landed a supporting role in Carrie as Norma Watson, a baseball cap-wearing mean girl who gets her comeuppance when the title character (Sissy Spacek) kills her and a high school gym full of promgoers in a telekinetic rage.

After her role in the 1976 Stephen King adaptation, Soles starred in a number of TV movies and acted opposite Dennis Quaid in the 1978 film Our Winning Season. Soles and Quaid wed that same year, but they divorced in 1983.

Following Our Winning Season, Soles got her second role in a horror favorite when she was cast as Jamie Lee Curtis’ ditzy Valley girl friend, Lynda Van Der Klok, in John Carpenter‘s 1978 smash Halloween. While neither her Carrie or Halloween characters survive (such is the risk of being in a horror movie), she brought style and sass to her performances, and they ended up defining her career.

From screams to laughs

Soles soon made the move from horror to comedy, and starred in the 1979 cult classic Rock ‘n’ Roll High School as a rebellious high school student who teams up with the punk band the Ramones, with delightfully campy and anarchic results. She then played one of Goldie Hawn’s fellow soldiers in the 1980 comedy hit Private Benjamin. Her comedy streak continued the next year, when she played Bill Murray’s love interest in Stripes.

Throughout the rest of the ’80s, Soles appeared in various TV shows and acted in movies like Soggy Bottom, U.S.A. (1981), Innocent Prey (1984) and Sweet Dreams (1985).

Her later career

Soles spent the ’90s appearing in TV movies and straight-to-video projects, and in 1999 she had a small role in the cult favorite teen comedy Jawbreaker. As nostalgia for ’70s horror movies grew in the aughts, Soles appeared as her Rock ‘n’ Roll High School character in a 2003 music video for the Donnas song “Too Bad About Your Girl” and served as the inspiration for the 2004 album Whatever Happened to P.J. Soles? by the band Local H.

The actress also took on self-referential roles in stylized genre fare like The Devil’s Rejects (2005), The Butterfly Room (2012) and Grindsploitation (2016) and had an offscreen cameo as the voice of a minor character in 2018’s Halloween reboot.

Soles’ most recent film credits were in three low-budget horror movies from 2019, Candy Corn; Killer Therapy and Hanukkah, and she’s now a staple of the horror convention circuit. In an interview she admitted that while she loves connecting with fans at horror events, “I don’t think of myself as a horror icon, only because I haven’t done just horror movies.” As she described, “I love Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, and I’ve done a lot of television. Simon & Simon and Air Wolf and Hardcastle and McCormick and Cheers and Knight Rider. I did a lot of episodic TV over the years, and then obviously Private Benjamin with Goldie Hawn and Stripes with Bill Murray. So in my mind, I’m like, ‘OK, why do you always call me a scream queen?’ I understand it because of those two movies being so iconic, but in my mind, I’m an actress.”