Maureen McCormick

Maureen Denise McCormick (born August 5, 1956) is an American actress.

McCormick was born on August 5, 1956, in the Encino section of Los Angeles, California, to Irene (née Beckman) and Richard McCormick, a teacher.

She has three older brothers: Michael, Dennis and Kevin.

She is of Irish and German descent, and was raised in a Catholic family.

At age six, she won the Baby Miss San Fernando Valley beauty pageant.

Through the later 1960s McCormick appeared in two episodes of Bewitched—-in a Season One dream of Darrin's as one of his witch children named Little Endora, and then in a Season Two Halloween episode as Endora herself transformed into a little girl.

She also played guest roles on I Dream of Jeannie, Honey West, The Farmer's Daughter and My Three Sons.

In 1964, she first appeared on national U.S. television, in Mattel commercials for Barbie and Chatty Cathy dolls.

She portrayed Marcia Brady on the ABC television sitcom The Brady Bunch, which ran from 1969 to 1974, and reprised the role in several of the numerous Brady Bunch spin-offs and films, including The Brady Kids, The Brady Bunch Hour, The Brady Brides and A Very Brady Christmas (1988).

McCormick has appeared in The Amanda Show as Moody's mom in the Moody's Point segment.

McCormick played the eldest daughter, Marcia, who had five siblings in The Brady Bunch, an American television sitcom about a blended family that aired from late 1969 to early 1974 on ABC, on Friday nights.

She had a perky and popular personality.

After its cancellation, the series was later rebroadcast in syndication for decades, as children's programming, gathering long-lasting, cross-generational popularity that led to spinoffs and movies.

McCormick had a sporadic romance with her Brady Bunch co-star Barry Williams during the original series' run.

McCormick recorded four albums with the Brady Bunch cast and toured with them as well.

In 1970, she lent her voice to a redesigned Chatty Cathy doll.

McCormick attended Taft High School in Woodland Hills.

Despite her struggles with addiction and depression, McCormick did appear in guest roles on numerous television series throughout the 1970s and 1980s, such as Happy Days, Donny & Marie, The Love Boat (as Lori Markham in S6 E11 "A Christmas Presence" 1982), Vega$, The Streets of San Francisco and Fantasy Island, along with supporting roles in The Idolmaker and B movies such as A Vacation in Hell (1979) and Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979).

McCormick later claimed she failed to get a role as a prostitute or heroin dealer for the movie Midnight Express because she continued to be identified with her Brady Bunch role.

In 1972, she released her first solo single with the songs "Truckin' Back to You" and "Teeny Weeny Bit (Too Long)".

The following year, McCormick recorded an album with her Brady Bunch co-star Christopher Knight, a pop recording titled Chris Knight and Maureen McCormick, which carried both duets and solo tracks.

McCormick's second solo single "Little Bird", backed with "Just a Singin' Alone", had mild chart success in the western United States (reaching Top 5 at KCPX in Salt Lake City).

McCormick later performed "Little Bird" on American Bandstand, where host Dick Clark encouraged her to follow a singing career.

McCormick released another single in 1973, "Love's in the Roses", backed with "Harmonize".

McCormick also appeared in The Idolmaker (1980) as well as a wide range of other supporting film roles.

In the 1980s and 1990s, she ventured into stage acting, appearing in a variety of different roles and productions such as Wendy Darling in Peter Pan and Betty Rizzo in Grease.

McCormick also had a brief career as a recording artist, releasing four studio albums with the Brady Bunch cast as well as touring with them.

She flubbed an audition with Steven Spielberg for a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), arriving for the audition under the influence of cocaine and having not slept for three days.

She developed a reputation in Hollywood for being unreliable, to the point that one producer threatened that she would never work as an actress again.

She also dealt with bouts of depression and bulimia.

Her only release as a solo artist to date is a country music album, When You Get a Little Lonely (1995).

Despite professional success on The Brady Bunch and its spin-offs, McCormick struggled in her personal life in the years following the original series' end.

Addictions to cocaine and quaaludes, as well as bouts of depression and bulimia, all contributed to McCormick losing her reputation for reliability as an actress.

Since the 2000s, she has appeared on several reality television series such as VH1's Celebrity Fit Club, CMT's Gone Country (which led to a short-lived spin-off series led by McCormick, Outsiders Inn) and the Australian version of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, as well as guest spots on a wide range of television series.

In 2008, McCormick published an autobiography, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice, which debuted at number four on The New York Times bestseller list.

In 2015, archive footage of McCormick as Marcia was used for an American TV commercial advertising Snickers chocolate bars.

The commercial, which debuted during Super Bowl XLIX, features action film star Danny Trejo as young Marcia who (in the context of being hungry) is not acting like herself.

After eating a Snickers, Marcia appears as McCormick once again.

Following the cancellation of The Brady Bunch, McCormick spent years addicted to cocaine and quaaludes, which impeded her career.

McCormick later stated that she sometimes traded sex for drugs during her early 20s.