In the late 1950s, Connie Stevenscame to fame for her acting and singing career, and became especially popular for her starring role on the series Hawaiian Eye. Stevens played Cricket on the detective show from 1959 to 1963. Around the same time, she found success with her music with the singles "Sixteen Reasons" and "Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)."
As time went on, Stevens continued acting regularly, with guest roles on popular series like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and in more recent decades, Clueless and 8 Simple Rules. She was also in movies like Scorchy and Grease 2 and became a nightclub performer. Now 83, she had been steadily working up until the past couple years. Read on to find out more about her career and life today.
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Connie Stevens has been acting for several decades.
Max B. Miller/Fotos International/Getty ImagesStevens' most recent role was in the 2019 movie By the Rivers of Babylon, which also featured her daughter, Joely Fisher. The two previously worked together on the 2016 movie Search Engines—about a family spending Thanksgiving without access to technology or their cell phones—and played mother and daughter.
"She walks through the door and I'm joyful," Stevens told The Baltimore Sun of working with her daughter. "Being on the set and watching her work and watching her triumph … I think I am very much like that character. But you know what, I don't care. I don't know how to work the internet, nothing."
She's also a director.
Michael Tran/FilmMagic via Getty ImagesStevens has tried out directing, too. She helmed her first feature film, Saving Grace B. Jones, in 2009. She had previously directed the documentary A Healing in 1997.
"I started this film at 70,” Stevens toldThe Hollywood Reporter of Saving Grace B. Jones, “so I’m very proud of my accomplishment. I have asked, but I don’t think there is another female [movie director] that has ever done that." She was also planning to direct another movie, Prairie Bones, but it hasn't yet come to fruition.
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Stevens suffered a health setback in 2016.
Desiree Stone/Getty ImagesIn 2016, Stevens had a stroke, which she opened up about in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "I was in the hospital about 16 days, I think, and I couldn’t walk, couldn’t move my whole left side, and now I can and I'm in the pool everyday," she said.
Fisher spoke about her mother's stroke in a 2021 interview with Closer. "She was nearly taken out by a stroke five years ago," she revealed. "She says, ‘I bounced back!’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can describe what you’re doing right now as bouncing, Mom! But we are happy to have you alive. You have eight grandchildren, and they adore you.’"
She's a mother and grandmother.
Jerod Harris/WireImage via Getty ImagesJoely Fisher isn't Stevens' only daughter. She has eight grandchildren through her two daughters, Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Both daughters were born during her two-year marriage to Eddie Fisher in the late '60s. "They've always been the light in my eye," Stevens told The Baltimore Sun of her daughters. "And I have found the older I get, that's really what counts anyway."
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