Where Is The Cast Of Grease Now?

"Grease" is one of the few musicals that everyone knows the lyrics to, whether they desire such knowledge or not. It's also one of the few, no ... only, musicals that actively teach the audience to become worse versions of themselves if a hot guy wants to hook up, but that's beside the point. 

Bitterness aside, here's a quick rundown for the potentially uninitiated: "Grease" follows the love story of two teens who come from different worlds and want different things. Think "High School Musical" without the Disney filter. It's a simple setup that was easy for non-musical fans to sink their teeth into and because of that, in 1978, the stage production received a movie that skyrocketed it to the stratosphere in terms of popularity, almost literally making grease the word.

Not only did the film cement "Grease" as a permanent facet of pop culture, but it also helped build the careers of a massive pool of actors and actresses. While several cast members — like Jeff Conaway, who starred as Kenickie, Annette Charles, who played Cha-Cha DiGregorio, and Edd Byrnes, who appeared as Vince Fontaine – have passed away in the intervening years, some of the "Grease" performers are still working away in the industry, holding a variety of positions. 

Here's where the cast is now. A note: Aside from a recent burst of articles (such as this one from Miss News) declaring her as aging gracefully, little to nothing is known of Susan Buckner, who played the cheerleader Patty Simcox, these days. So no, she wasn't forgotten — she simply vanished from the public eye entirely.

Unlike co-star John Travolta, who focused his career around the silver screen, Olivia Newton-John — who played Sandy Olsson, the innocent transfer student who fell for the bad boy — opted for a different trajectory. 

Yes, she continued to act from time to time, such as starring in another movie musical, "Xanadu," as well as a movie and televised series based on the stage play, "Sordid Lives," but her primary aim was to create music. And create music she did, because the four-time Grammy Award-winning singer currently has 26 studio albums, six live albums, 14 compilation albums, and six soundtracks to her name (via Rate Your Music). As recently as May 2022, she tweeted that her music had collectively been streamed almost 256 million times on Pandora alone. Even for a long career such as Newton-John's, that kind of output is astronomical.

Deeply intertwined with Newton-John's music is her long track record of activism. She's performed with UNICEF, canceled an entire tour to protest animal cruelty (via Stripes), and recorded tracks to vocalize her stance on environmentalism (i.e., tracks like "The Promise (The Dolphin Song)"). These are only a handful of examples, but the list goes on and on. Olivia Newton-John's music has also been deeply influenced by her personal health, having struggled with breast cancer on and off for decades (via her interview with Survivor Net). 

So, what's she up to now? Well, according to her 2021 interview with Best Life, she's working with a foundation she created to research and cure cancer. She's also still singing, even if she's done touring. At this point, though, Olivia Newton-John is kind of slowing down to enjoy life with her current husband, John Easterling.

Filling out the ranks of the T-Birds, Barry Pearl and Michael Tucci played Doody and Sonny, respectively. For the film, both of their roles were shrunk somewhat, but stage fans know that Doody is the adorable dork with a guitar and that Sonny is, well ... pretty much the same, actually. While both actors followed their own paths after "Grease," their careers share similar beats. Both Pearl and Tucci found minor success in movies and slightly more success in television. The two also split their time between Hollywood and Broadway, with Pearl starring in productions such as "Happy Days the Musical" and Tucci starring in "Cabaret." Pearl even returned to "Grease" with the 2017 "Grease Live," where he did a cameo in a smaller, older role.

Lastly, and most recently, they both transitioned into education. Pearl teaches film arts with the Inclusion Film Company, whose mission statement is to focus on building arts knowledge among individuals with developmental disabilities (via Broadway World). He still acts, recently appearing in a 2022 TV film called "That Walls Are Watching." Tucci, on the other hand, pivoted more dramatically by becoming a full-time high school teacher at St. Francis High School in La Cañada, California, as seen in a 2012 article by Crescent Valley Weekly. Now retired from his day job, though, Tucci has returned to the industry, with his most recent credit being a 2018 UMC original series, "The Rich & The Ruthless."

Whenever the T-Birds are listed, often the last name spoken is Putzie. After all, he's a non-singing replacement character for Roger, a T-Bird who appears in the stage musical. And sure, Putzie isn't anything special, but his actor, Kelly Ward, is far from boring. Out of all the T-Birds, Ward's career after "Grease" took the most unique direction. With only 18 acting credits on his IMDb page, Ward focused his time on other facets of the industry, namely, screenwriting and voice direction. In fact, he's written or directed more episodes of television than most actors have ever appeared in.

Currently, Ward works with Disney Television Animation doing what he clearly loves — directing, writing, and casting (though not always at the same time) such productions as "Mickey Mouse Funhouse" and "Chip 'N' Dale: Park Life." 

In "Grease," Eugene is the school's most notorious nerd, a title which, for some ridiculous reason, came bundled with intense contempt in the 1980s. In the 1978 film, he was played by Eddie Deezen, who at the time had only just begun his career. Nowadays, though, it's nearly impossible to find a millennial who doesn't recognize the actor's voice, and it has almost nothing to do with his time at Rydell High. 

That's because Deezen found himself a niche in the voice acting industry, by perfecting the ability to emit the nerdiest voice the world has ever known. More specifically, he played Mandark on "Dexter's Laboratory." He was also the Know-It-All from "Polar Express" and literally hundreds of other obnoxious characters (via his IMDb page). That said, outside of acting, Deezen has been arrested a number of times in recent years on charges of trespassing, burglary, and assaulting a police officer (via Page Six).