Betsy Palmer agreed to appear in Friday the 13th (1980) to buy a new car
How a broken Mercedes led to the role of a lifetime.
Some actors take on roles for the experience. Others star in a movie because they believe it's destined to turn them into a star. Betsy Palmer, a seasoned actor, agreed to appear in a film to buy a new car. What she didn’t realize was that the film she so casually agreed to appear in was destined to become one of the biggest horror films of all time.
Palmer had previously appeared in films like The Tin Star (1957) and The Last Angry Man (1959). By the 1980s, Palmer hadn’t starred in a film in a very long time, and it seemed she had no intention of rejoining Hollywood. Fortunately, when she was invited to appear in Friday the 13th (1980), Palmer was having some car trouble.
“I did it [the film] to buy a car,” Palmer said during an interview with The Pantagraph. “My Mercedes broke down on the Connecticut Turnpike, and I was waiting for the police to come. I said to myself, ‘This is it: I need a new car.’”
At that moment, Palmer’s agent called her with an opportunity to audition for the horror film. “I said, ‘Great!’” said Palmer. “I hadn’t made a movie since The Last Angry Man in 1959. My agent said it was ‘one of those horror films, but I think it’s pretty good for its genre.’ So I read the script, and I thought, ‘What a piece of (bleep)!’ But nobody’ll ever see it.”
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