What ’70s Scream Queen P.J. Soles Has Been Up to Since Her Scene-Stealing Roles in ‘Carrie’ and ‘Halloween’

P.J. Soles rose to fame in the late '70s, and established herself as a scream queen when horror movies were starting to explode in popularity. Her roles in the genre classics Carrie and Halloween earned her much attention (even if she ended up dying grisly deaths in both of them—such is the nature of being a supporting character in a horror movie), and she then branched out into comedy with a starring role in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and supporting parts in Private Benjamin and Stripes .

Now 74, Soles has continued to act, and she can often be seen in low-budget films and films that pay homage to her classic roles. Here’s a look at her long career and what she’s been up to in more recent years, along with some facts you might not have known about her.

An international origin story

P.J. Soles (the P.J. stands for Pamela Jayne) was born in Frankfurt, Germany to an American mother and Dutch father in 1950, and lived around the world growing up due to her dad’s work with an international insurance company. She moved to the U.S. to attend college, which she initially hoped would lead to a job at the UN, but a fateful visit to the Actor’s Studio in New York sparked her interest in acting. Soon enough, she dropped out of school, got an agent and began modeling and appearing in commercials.

The audition that changed film history

Soles had a truly auspicious start to her film career, and got her big break when she attended a joint casting session held by George Lucas and Brian De Palma for what would become two of the biggest films of the decade: Star Wars and Carrie . She auditioned for the role of Princess Leia that went to Carrie Fisher , and while she obviously didn’t get it, she landed a supporting role as in Carrie , playing Norma Watson, a baseball cap-wearing mean girl who gets her comeuppance when the title character kills her (and many of her classmates) at the prom in a telekinetic rage.

Today, it’s hard to believe that there was a two-for-one audition for such iconic movies, but as Soles remembered, “George was casting for Star Wars , and Brian for Carrie . Nobody knew either one of them at that point. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was just two directors behind a desk. I was chosen by Brian to be in Carrie , and then that movie started the ball rolling.”

P.J. Soles’ horror stardom continues

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 got married 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 Lynda van der Klok, Jamie Lee Curtis ’ ditzy Valley girl friend in John Carpenter 's 1978 smash Halloween .

Her character was known for constantly saying “Totally!” and Soles revealed that she told Carpenter, “There’s a bunch of ‘totallys’ in here, but I think I’m gonna push it so every time Lynda talks I’m going to say ‘totally’ if I can. And if it gets too obnoxious or you think it’s too much, let me know. And he never did.” Even if neither of Soles’ characters survived their horror movies, she still brought much style and sass to her roles, and her Halloween character proved highly influential as one of the first-ever Valley girls onscreen.

How P.J. Soles went from scream queen to punk rocker to comedy star

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.

Funnily enough, while Soles played a Ramones mega-fan in the film, she wasn’t actually familiar with the band when she was cast, saying, “I had never heard of the Ramones . As I left the final audition, [director] Alan Arkush handed me a cassette of the Ramones and said, ‘Listen to this when you get home tonight.’ I was married to Dennis Quaid at the time and I put it in the cassette player and cranked it up, and I was a big fan of the Eagles and Jackson Browne and J.D. Souther and Linda Ronstadt and here came this noise and I just went around the house screaming, going, ‘Oh my God. I have to be their number one fan? What is this? What is this?’ Dennis kind of liked it right away, but I don’t remember understanding it or really knowing what it was. It blows my mind today to think of that moment because I really couldn’t hear anything about it that I liked, and yet today I love them and I love their songs.”

Soles continued to prove her comedic talents as the ’80s came around, playing one of Goldie Hawn ’s fellow soldiers in the 1980 comedy hit Private Benjamin . She then played Bill Murray ’s love interest in another military-themed comedy, the 1981 movie 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).

What P.J. Soles has been up to lately

Soles had a lower profile in the '90s, as she mostly appeared in TV movies and straight-to-video projects. In 1999 she had a small role in the campy teen dark comedy Jawbreaker. When the aughts came around, there was a growing nostalgia for ’70s slasher movies and Soles found herself becoming an cool girl for a new generation, as she appeared as her Rock ‘n’ Roll High School character in the 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 fixture 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.”

Even if Soles doesn’t call herself a scream queen, her fans think she’s earned the title, and her many characters, from mean girls to Valley girls to punk rockers to soldiers, perfectly captured their era while appealing to viewers of all ages and interests since then.

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