About

Born in New York City, Brooke began acting at age 6 in her father’s summer theater in Michigan. Her stage credits include The Heidi Chronicles on broadway, Key Exchange at the Orpheum, Split at the Second Stage, The Old Neighborhood at A.R.T., If Memory Serves at the Pasadena Playhouse, The Philanderer at the Yale Rep, The Cherry Orchard at the Atlantic Theater Co., and most recently Happy Days by Samuel Beckett in Pasadena, Boston, and NYC.

Her film credits include Days of Heaven, Gas Food Lodging, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Dead Zone, Cuba, Tell Me A Riddle, and Key Exchange. She produced and starred in Made-Up written by her sister Lynne Adams. She collaborated again with her sister, creating the web series All Downhill From Here.

On television, she appeared in Thirtysomething, Moonlighting, Family, The Lion of Africa, Special People, the miniseries LACE and LACE II, and MONK, starring her husband Tony Shalhoub.

In her early twenties, Brooke lived in Spain for four years where with no training, she painted everything she saw in watercolors. When she returned to the states and started working as an actress again, painting got away from her. In 1993, after the birth of her second daughter, she stopped acting and decided to take art classes — her passion for painting was reawakened.

Her first show was on Martha’s Vineyard in 2006, a group show at the Dragonfly Gallery. The following year she participated in a two-person show at the Hamilton Gallery in Santa Monica called Double Feature where she showed her Behind the Scenes paintings. Additional shows include a two-person show of her Moroccan paintings in 2010, a showing of her monochrome work called Cast of Characters in Martha’s Vineyard at Vineyard Playhouse Gallery in 2012, and a show at her home in Martha’s Vineyard in 2019 and again during Covid in 2020. Most recently, her work appeared in a group show in Martha’s Vineyard at the Kara Taylor Gallery in 2021 where she showcased portraits of her friends.

After nearly 30 years away from filmmaking, the 1981 film Haunted, now renamed Vengeance is Mine, was re-released at the Film Forum with a review in The New York Times that was a love letter to Brooke which prompted a retrospective of her work at the Harvard Film Archive. In all of her art, whether it be acting or painting, Adams brings liveliness, familiarity, and heart to all.