The Brady Bunch star Susan Olsen has recalled the moment that led her to step back from her acting career.
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During a recent interview with Remind magazine, Olsen discussed what kept her acting after The Brady Bunch ended.
“For reasons I can’t even explain, I continue to do acting or to pursue it,” she said. “I think to please my mother, even when I was like 18.”
The former child star then said, “I had an opportunity when I was accepted at USC, even though my grades were not quite good enough. I do not know why I didn’t go ahead and join the film school, because I must have known that I had an inkling for that. And now I know that’s really where I belong, and it’s just weird to me that I didn’t know it [then].”
However, it was in her early 20s that Olsen finally realized acting wasn’t really her passion. “It wasn’t until I was 23 that I actually landed an acting job and was driving home with the script and went, ‘Oh my gosh, I hate acting. What am I doing? This is terrible,'” she reaclled. “Of course I did the role, but I called my teacher, I called my agent and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ It wasn’t my medium. And then immediately things started working out well for me as a graphic artist.”
Olsen’s first acting role was in the 1968 Elvis Presley movie The Trouble With Girls. She joined the cast of The Brady Bunch the following year as Cindy Brady. She kept the role during the original series and the TV specials that followed. Her last role was in the 2021 TV film Blended Christmas.
Olsen Revealed What She Would Have Done Instead of Acting
Continuing to speak about her career, Olsen revealed what she would have done instead of acting.
“[Becoming a rock star] was really what I was dreaming of,” she revealed. “I did more dreaming than practicing. I think, in my head, I didn’t even consider being a filmmaker because I knew I’d horrify my mother by becoming a rock star. So that was my ulterior motive. … So yeah, I was in bands and stuff when I was younger.”
Olsen then opened up about her musical talents.
“I started out as a guitar player, but I really found that I was much more suited for bass,” she said. “And this was before bass became the token female position in the band. And you didn’t see girls playing bass, but it felt so much more natural. The only band I was really in, I was kind of best friends with the drummer, so it just all made sense.”