Nancy Barrett's early life began in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was born, before she moved to Oklahoma to grow up. Like many future actors, she started performing at a young age, staging plays in her backyard with her sister Martha. After completing two years at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she met Ivan Rider, a drama professor who would later become a director in New York, and had a profound impact on her early years in the theater.
Following her second year at Baylor, Nancy and two friends spent a summer in Los Angeles, where she starred in a production of "Little Mary Sunshine" and fell in love with the city. She then transferred to UCLA, graduating a year later. Her next role was as the lead in "The Fantasticks" in Los Angeles, alongside Bill Bixby, who would later star in TV classics "My Favorite Martian" and "The Incredible Hulk".
After moving to New York, Nancy continued her stage work, making her Broadway debut in "Pickwick" alongside Davy Jones, who would later star in "The Monkees" on TV.
In 1966, Nancy became part of the original cast of Dark Shadows, playing the role of Carolyn Stoddard, daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch played by screen legend Joan Bennett. During her time on the show, she took breaks to appear in plays, including Neil Simon's "The Star-Spangled Girl" and "The Physicists".
Nancy's personal life was marked by two brief marriages, first to a co-star on Dark Shadows, David Ford, and then to Dr. Harold Kaplan, a prominent New York psychiatrist. The couple remained together until Dr. Kaplan's death in January 1998. Before his passing, Nancy finally had the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream by performing a one-woman show, "As If We Never Said Good-bye", at the annual Dark Shadows Festival in New York City in August 1997. She has since performed similar shows in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Midwest, and at the New York cabaret club Don't Tell Mama.
In the holiday season of 1999, Nancy made her ballet debut in a production of "The Nutcracker". She is currently in the planning stages of a music CD, which she hopes to complete in early 2003.
