Marcia Marcia Marcia! Actress Eve Plumb will always be remembered for repeating
her sister's name over and over again on The Brady Bunch, but we're willing to bet that
there is a lot about the former child actress that you're probably completely unaware of.
A lot of people tend to lump all of the Brady kids together whenever discussing The Brady Bunch,
but Eve Plumb, the actress that played who played Brady's middle daughter, Jan Brady,
was, and always will be, in a league of her own.
The Southern California native began her career in the early 60s,
appearing in commercials at age seven. Soon enough, she landed guest roles on
television shows such as The Virginian, The Big Valley, and Family Affair. In 1969 she
was cast in the role that would prove to be the most definitive one of her acting career.
Plumb continued to portray Jan Brady until the Brady Bunch was canceled in
1974. After that iconic series came to end, Plumb kept working in television. In 1976,
she played a teenage prostitute in the NBC made-for-TV film Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage
Runaway. Two years later, she played Elizabeth March in the 1978 NBC miniseries Little Women.
While Plumb kept her acting career alive for many years after The Brady Bunch series ended, her role
as Jan Brady would ultimately prove to be the one that audiences were most familiar with. For
the next decade or so, Plumb continued to reprise that role, albeit reluctantly, in various Brady
Bunch reunion series and films such as 1981's The Brady Brides and 1988's A Very Brady Christmas.
In 1988, Plumb appeared in the film I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and in 1997,
she appeared in Gregg Araki's black comedy Nowhere. More recently,
she has been spotted on the New York stage in the 2010 play Miss Abigails Guide To Dating,
Mating, and Marriage. She followed that role up with appearances in two
stage productions of Nora Ephron's Same Time, Next Year, and Love, Loss, and What I Wore.
Returning to the screen, Plumb enjoyed a supporting role in the 2013 critically
acclaimed thriller Blue Ruin. Since then, she's been seen in TV shows
like 2019's A Very Renovation and 2021's Dragging the Classics: The Brady Bunch.
At this point in her career, however, Plumb is no longer focused on keeping her acting career
alive. Instead, her professional path has taken her in an entirely different direction. Join Facts
Verse as we discuss how Eve Plumb from The Brady Bunch is No Longer an Actress – Not Even Close.
Plumb Wanted More
When The Brady Bunch first debuted in 1969, fans of the series immediately fell in love
with the giant, tight-knit family that they saw on their TV screens. Eve Plumb's Jan
Brady was first depicted on the show as an insecure tween who was essentially living
in the shadow of her significantly more popular sister, Marcia. Throughout the
seasons, however, she grew into a more self-assured and confident teen beauty.
While the show was immediately a hit with audiences, it rose to new heights following
its cancellation in 1974 when its reruns began airing in syndication. At the time,
Plumb decided to not participate in some of the
earlier reprisals in hopes of landing more significant roles. Because of this,
she was, in fact, the only Brady not to reprise her role in 1976's The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.
Now, at 64, the former child actor has grown her career in a handful of unexpected ways.
She's never quite abandoned her Brady Bunch roots, as she wouldn't be where
she is today if she hadn't appeared on that program, but if you were under the
impression that she hasn't done much since her Jan Brady days, you'd be sorely mistaken.
Plumb, as we noted in the intro, got her start as an actor when she
was barely out of preschool. At age 7, neither she nor her
family expected that she would ever find success in the entertainment industry.
Speaking to Closer Weekly in 2018, Plumb said that her first taste of fame just
sort of came to her unexpectedly not long after a children's agent moved next door
to her family when she was still a kid. At first, she just appeared in commercials,
but it didn't take long before she started landing roles in TV shows like The Big Valley and Lassie.
From the beginning, Plumb says that her family was very involved in
her acting career. They gave her the support and guidance that she needed
to succeed both on set and in terms of the behind-the-scenes business side of things.
Plumb's father ran her career and invested her money in wise ways,
while her mother always accompanied her on set every day. Unlike other parents of child actors,
Plumb says that her parents never took a cent from her.
In 1969 Plumb was cast as Jan Brady. After the series ended in
1974, following its five-season run, Eve continued acting. While appearing in films like Nowhere,
Blue Ruin, and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Plumb also made appearances on TV shows like The Love Boat,
The Facts of Life, Fudge, Murder She Wrote, and in more recent times, That 70s Show and Blue Bloods.
As we briefly touched on earlier, Plumb eventually agreed to reprise her role
as Jan Brady in several of the Brady Bunch spin-offs such as The Brady Girls Get Married,
The Bradys, and A Very Brady Christmas. But even all these years later, Plumb
says that it's still hard for her to break free from her Brady role.
This is a fairly common plight for former child stars who are most
closely associated with the roles that they played in their youth.
It can be almost impossible for an actor or actress to break free from such roles after
reaching adulthood. Whenever audiences see their names, they almost always associate
them with their iconic roles. While some former child stars lean into this and make
a career out of their childhood success, it can make landing new roles next to impossible.
Interestingly, even though The Brady Bunch is the show that she's most famous for appearing
in when giving an interview a couple of years on the radio program Sway in the Morning,
Plumb pointed out that The Brady Bunch wasn't regarded as being 'relevant or
interesting' by the majority of viewers who watched it during its initial run.
The series wasn't like some of the other shows on TV back then,
such as Mod Squad or All In The Family. Frankly, people didn't find a show about
a bunch of kids and their family dogs to be all that relevant during the era of the Vietnam war.
Even so, the series ultimately evolved into an unexpected success
story in the years that followed its cancellation. Not only did The
Brady Bunch become one of the most iconic and emblematic shows of its era, but the
young stars that helped make it happen became forever immortalized in their respective roles.
Post-Brady, Eve Plumb worked super hard to break free from her
typecasting. She was willing to audition for just about any role that she heard about. She
desperately wanted to prove that she was capable of doing things other than simply
being a Brady. But not only did Plumb do her best to branch out from the Bunch in terms of her
acting career, but she also continued to expand her career in several other surprising ways.
A Penchant For Painting
Anyone that watched HGTV's A Very Brady Renovation knows that Eve Plumb is gifted with some killer
art skills. In the third episode, Plumb helped Leanne and Steve Ford, the brother-sister team who
are the stars of the series Restored by the Fords, recreate the Brady Kitchen and family room inside
of the actual house that was used as the backdrop for the Brady family home on the original series.
You see, even though Eve Plumb continued acting after The Brady Bunch,
she eventually discovered that she had a hidden passion for painting. In between acting jobs,
she needed something to occupy her time and keep her mind sharp. So, when she discovered that she
had a talent for art, painting became one of her most prominent creative outlets.
For the last two decades, Plumb has been working out of her studio in the NYC apartment that she
shares with her beloved husband of 27 years, Ken Pace. Since picking up the paintbrush
and honing her skills, Plumb's pieces have been featured in numerous galleries around the world.
While she's never received any formal artistic training,
Plumb has gotten quite skilled at painting still lifes. She enjoys capturing objects
and moments that she stumbles upon in her everyday life in her travels.
Some of Eve's most recent works have been of fruits and food. She's painted
iconic items that depict well-known aspects of life in the Big Apple,
such as Fishs Eddy bowls. She's also done pieces that capture restaurant seats,
coffee mugs, and food condiments sprawled out on checkered tables.
She Recently Sold Her Condo
In 2021, Pumb listed her New York City condo for $1.8 million. The
1,224-square-foot abode features two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The condo is located in the Lenox
Hill neighborhood and boasts stunning views of the East River and the famed Manhattan skyline.
The condo has an open floor plan which combines kitchen, living,
and dining spaces. The master bedroom comes equipped with heated floors,
and the master bathroom has been fitted with a luxurious triple Toto rain shower head.
Plumb converted one of the bedrooms into an office space,
but it could easily be reverted back into a living space. The building
amenities include a laundry room, an extra storage space, and 24-hour doorman service.
In 2019, Plumb and Ken Pace sold their Upper West Side co-op for more
than $700,000. Three years before that, Plumb sold her childhood home in Malibu,
which she bought when she was 11, for $3.6 million.
Aside from her painting career and her various real estate ventures,
Plumb is still interested in acting. According to IMDB, she's slated to appear in the upcoming
film Bagdad, Florida. It's unclear if she has any other projects lined up,
but it's nice to see that she hasn't completely turned her back on show business.
We're just about out of time for this video, but before you go, we'd love to hear what
you have to say about Eve Plumb's Hollywood career and her various other ventures. Did
you know that Eve Plumb was the only Brady to not reprise her role on The Brady Bunch
Variety Hour and that in the last two decades she's spent the majority of her
team focusing on her art career? Let us know in the comments. And as always, thanks for watching!