Former 1970s horror movie queen Jennifer Salt — who got her start in the 1969 cinematic classic Midnight Cowboy before finding TV fame on the satirical sitcom Soap — was recently photographed on an outing in Los Angeles more than three decades after she stopped acting, and Wonderwall.com has the pictures.
Salt, 81 — who transitioned away from on-screen work in 1990 to a successful career in screenwriting and producing popular movies and TV shows — appeared to be thriving as she stepped out in the California sunshine on July 20.
Salt’s early career as a Hollywood scream queen
Salt skyrocketed to fame in the 1972 psychological-horror flick Sisters, directed by Brian De Palma, starring opposite Superman‘s Margot Kidder. She briefly dated De Palma when they were students at Sarah Lawrence College.
Prior to that, she appeared in a small role in the Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman classic Midnight Cowboy, which won three Academy Awards including best picture. She played Crazy Annie, the Texas hometown love of Voight’s character, Joe Buck, in his flashback scenes. (She also had a long romance with Voight in the late ’60s and early ’70s after they met while making the film.)
Her father, Waldo Salt, wrote the movie’s screenplay — and won an Oscar for it. Jennifer later followed in his footsteps and launched a successful screenwriting career of her own.
Her impressive film resume also included a role in 1972’s Play it Again, Sam with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton before she transitioned away from movies to television.
She struggled to find acting roles after starring on Soap
On the small screen, Jennifer appeared on episodes of The Love Boat; Love, American Style; Magnum, P.I.; Murder, She Wrote; and Family Ties during the 1970s and 1980s.
But the L.A. native’s most enduring role was on the ABC comedy series Soap, where she starred as Eunice Tate in 65 episodes starting in 1977.
After Soap — which launched the career of beloved Hollywood star Billy Crystal — ended in 1981, Jennifer’s acting career slowed dramatically. As she approached 40, she told The New York Times, she struggled to find steady work, landing only occasional television guest roles while also trying to build a stage career.
Meanwhile, her marriage had ended and she was raising a son on her own. “All of a sudden, I really couldn’t bear my life,” she recalled.
But what followed was an unlikely second act as she reinvented herself and mounted a remarkable Hollywood comeback.
She turned to writing after quitting acting
After a six-episode stint on the ABC sitcom The Marshall Chronicles in 1990, Salt retired from acting, trading life in front of the camera for a career behind the scenes.
She tried her hand at a career in interior design and considered moving to Montana and abandoning Hollywood altogether but was urged to join a writers’ workshop by her actress pal, Jill Clayburgh.
“It was terrifying. But I wanted more than anything in the world to get out of acting, and so I plugged away at a corny screenplay for two years,” she told the Times in 2010.
“Mostly I decided to try writing because I didn’t have to be young and beautiful and thin to do it,” she said. “But I was utterly shocked at how fun it was once I got started. I loved that I was in charge of my own intelligence.”
Ryan Murphy raved about her writing talent
She got her big break as a film and TV writer with a job on FX’s dark plastic-surgeon series Nip/Tuck, where she began working closely with the show’s creator, future TV titan Ryan Murphy.
“She sees the world in such a brilliant, sophisticated way I had to have her,” the Emmy winner raved, explaining why he hired her for his projects.
“Jennifer has this way of being able to get to the true motivations of people. She’ll say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is that character doing what she’s doing?’ That is an incredible talent, and I think it comes partly from the fact that Jennifer has had so many incarnations,” he gushed.
She was a writer and executive producer on American Horror Story
Jennifer went on to co-write, with Ryan, the screenplay for the popular 2010 Julia Roberts movie Eat Pray Love, which based on Elizabeth Gilbert‘s bestselling memoir of the same name.
“I really loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s disinterest in masking anything,” Jennifer told the Times. “She had no reluctance, for instance, about going on and on about God. That struck a chord in me.”
She remained one of Ryan’s key creative collaborators on his television projects, serving as a writer on his 2020 series Ratched as well as various seasons of American Horror Story, where she was also credited as an executive producer.
