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loganberrybunny) wrote2025-10-15 11:16 am
loganberrybunny) wrote2025-10-15 11:16 am
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Sandra Peabody: Safe is Real
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This is a rather different kind of Sandra Peabody post. She was severely abused by her male co-stars from The Last House on the Left,¹ but that wasn't all that happened in her life. She started out as a bit of an acting prodigy, appearing professionally before she had left high school, and turning down a scholarship from Florida State University in order to study drama at Carnegie Mellon. Aged 19, in 1967 she was selected to study under Sanford Meisner in person at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, which from what I gather means she was already recognised as an impressive acting talent.
¹ Regardless of what happened on set. I'll come to why I say this in another post.
Her film career either side of Last House on the Left was, in all honesty, minor. She had a few roles in exploitation and borderline softcore movies early on, and that was about it. In 1971 she answered an advert in Backstage magazine and won the fateful role in Last House. Perhaps unsurprisingly after her experience there, she left acting altogether after a couple more minor films. But from there she went into children's television production. Her kid-presented show Popcorn won her a Primetime Emmy Award, as well as several other accolades. The show was run on a shoestring, with an overall budget of $25,000 and a props budget of ten dollars per episode. Peabody personally bought props from garage sales and the like.
Peabody wrote documentaries for children as well as adults, but in the 2000s she began working as a talent agent and acting coach, teaching the Meisner Technique she learned as a student. She specialises in coaching and supporting inexperienced young actors – something which she is still doing today, at the age of 77. In other words, she has responded to being severely abused in her younger days by spending half a century being protective and supportive of young actors who are in similar positions to that which she once was. If even some of the stories of that unsafe Last House set are true, she would have had every justification in simply hiding away somewhere and enjoying a very private life. Instead, she works tirelessly to show other youngsters that safe is real.
Sandra Peabody is a hero.
This is a rather different kind of Sandra Peabody post. She was severely abused by her male co-stars from The Last House on the Left,¹ but that wasn't all that happened in her life. She started out as a bit of an acting prodigy, appearing professionally before she had left high school, and turning down a scholarship from Florida State University in order to study drama at Carnegie Mellon. Aged 19, in 1967 she was selected to study under Sanford Meisner in person at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, which from what I gather means she was already recognised as an impressive acting talent.
¹ Regardless of what happened on set. I'll come to why I say this in another post.
Her film career either side of Last House on the Left was, in all honesty, minor. She had a few roles in exploitation and borderline softcore movies early on, and that was about it. In 1971 she answered an advert in Backstage magazine and won the fateful role in Last House. Perhaps unsurprisingly after her experience there, she left acting altogether after a couple more minor films. But from there she went into children's television production. Her kid-presented show Popcorn won her a Primetime Emmy Award, as well as several other accolades. The show was run on a shoestring, with an overall budget of $25,000 and a props budget of ten dollars per episode. Peabody personally bought props from garage sales and the like.
Peabody wrote documentaries for children as well as adults, but in the 2000s she began working as a talent agent and acting coach, teaching the Meisner Technique she learned as a student. She specialises in coaching and supporting inexperienced young actors – something which she is still doing today, at the age of 77. In other words, she has responded to being severely abused in her younger days by spending half a century being protective and supportive of young actors who are in similar positions to that which she once was. If even some of the stories of that unsafe Last House set are true, she would have had every justification in simply hiding away somewhere and enjoying a very private life. Instead, she works tirelessly to show other youngsters that safe is real.
Sandra Peabody is a hero.
