Leslie Easterbrook Biography

Leslie Eileen Easterbrook (born July 29, 1949) is an American actress.

Early life

Easterbrook was born in Los Angeles and adopted by a family in rural Arcadia, Nebraska, where she was raised. Her father later earned a Ph.D and became a voice/trumpet professor at University of Nebraska at Kearney. He prepared her for operatic roles and coached her in trumpet playing for Laverne & Shirley.

Career

Easterbrook has become a familiar face to American audiences, with about a dozen feature films and over 300 television episodes to her credit. She first became famous as Rhonda Lee, the Marilyn-Monroe-like neighbor of Laverne & Shirley. But the role for which she is most widely known is that of Sergeant (later Lieutenant, then Captain) Debbie Callahan, the no-nonsense blonde bombshell in the popular Police Academy movie series. Among the television shows in which Leslie has appeared are Murder, She Wrote, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Baywatch, Matlock, Hunter, and The Dukes of Hazzard. Soap opera fans will remember her as Devlin Kowalski from Ryan's Hope. More recently, she's been doing voice work, lending her vocal talents to Superman and Batman: The Animated Series.

Easterbrook's vocal talents led to her being chosen to sing the National Anthem at Super Bowl XVII and have landed her starring roles in musicals on Broadway and throughout the country; she also recorded a song for the soundtrack of Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. She was also a frequent panelist on Match Game in the 1980s.

An accomplished sports shooter, Leslie has put together a video, Real Beginner's Guide to the Shotgun Sports, the first in a series designed to encourage and prepare non-shooters for their first shooting experience. Leslie serves on the board of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, and supports a number of children's charities including Girls, Inc., The Sunshine Kids and Variety Children's Charities. Easterbrook is an NRA member and has served on the board of directors of the California Rifle & Pistol Association.

In 2005, Leslie replaced Karen Black as Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, the sequel to the 2003 horror movie, House of 1000 Corpses. In 2007, she played security guard Patty Frost in Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween. In 2008, she played as Betty in the thriller/horror film House. In 2010 she played the lead role in The Afflicted. Her next major role will be in the film Greater, which tells the story of Brandon Burlsworth, and his journey from a former walk-on football player at the University of Arkansas, to an All-American, drafter into the NFL.