Who Is Tony Shalhoub's Wife, Brooke Adams?

Tony Shalhoub has been married to Brooke Adams for decades, and their partnership is still going strong. Speaking with Closer Weekly in 2024, Shalhoub revealed the secret to his long, happy marriage: mutual respect. "I always feel like a successful marriage is one that has an equal number of apologies on both sides," he said. "People have to be willing to be humble, be forgiving, and be apologetic and not hold on to slights. I'm so fortunate, she's the right life partner for me."

But ... who is Brooke Adams? While Shalhoub's career has only risen in the years since they got together, thanks to roles like "Monk," "Men in Black," and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," Adams' own career has fallen by the wayside. When they first met, however, she was the bigger star. Adams is an actor with a long and celebrated career, including having starred in two classic films that came out within months of each other. She's a mother, a painter, an actor and a playwright, and she's done it all while supporting her husband's ascent to the upper echelons of Hollywood character actor stardom. Read on to learn more about Brooke Adams, Tony Shalhoub's wife.

Brooke Adams is the daughter of Robert K. Adams, who was once vice president of CBS. As a result, she grew up around actors, and being surrounded by the industry from a very early age gave her one singular goal in life: to join their ranks. Speaking with Mubi in 2022, Brooke recalled summers spent in Flint, Michigan, where her father ran an arts program called The Musical Tent. "My sister and I were in love with theater," she explained. "We would sit all day long and watch rehearsals — we knew every lyric, every dance step, every line from every show."

Because her father was in the industry, he supported Brooke's ambition, and he didn't force her to focus on academics. "It was just, we were going to be actresses, my sister and I. We never even heard about taking an SAT or applying to college," she said. "We didn't go to college, and we just started acting."

She found success at a very early age. When she was only 14, her very first audition landed her a spot on a television show. Her second audition got her a regular role. "I just thought, 'Well, this is easy,'" she said. "My father got the call that I'd gotten the series and [he] accepted the role. When I got home and he told me, I was furious that he'd said 'Okay' without even consulting me." Brooke added, "It was just, that's what we did."

Though Brooke Adams initially wanted to be an actor, her career took a detour while she explored dance instead. She's a trained ballerina as well, having attended some of the most prestigious dance facilities in New York City. "I studied at New York City Ballet — I loved the discipline. I even loved the Russian teachers who would yell at you," she told Mubi. "I guess I'm kind of a masochist. I loved that kind of order in my life, which was not my family life."

In an effort to explore whether dance might be her preferred area of artistic expression, Adams enrolled at New York's High School of the Performing Arts. That's the high school from "Fame," a school that has launched the careers of everyone from Eartha Kitt to noted theater kid Timothée Chalamet. She had to leave, however, after she landed that aforementioned TV role.

Still, Adams had received hints that maybe dance was not for her. One of her dance teachers also taught an acting class, and she got some feedback that made her reconsider ballet. "He said to me, 'You're a good actress,'" Adams recalled. "And I thought, 'Well, that's the kiss of death for a dancer to hear.'"

In the 1970s, having put her dancing aside, Brooke Adams' film career really took off. In 1978 alone, she starred in two classic films, making her mark on the entertainment industry as an exciting new star. First came Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven." Adams played Abby, a scheming woman who, at the urging of her lover (played by Richard Gere), strikes up a fake relationship with a dying farmer so that she can steal his fortune. Adams was glad she got the part, sensing that the movie would end up a classic. "I was just over-the-moon thrilled," she told The Film Stage. "I was just so excited. And, I don't know, I just always thought, 'This is going to be a really important film,' and I have no idea why I thought that."

Her instinct was correct. "Days of Heaven" is widely considered one of the best films of all time, and she told The Film Stage that she has an idea why that is. Behind the scenes, Malick kept cutting their dialogue, so the film is mostly quiet. "I think the fact that we don't do a lot of talking is probably one of the reasons why it's such an enduring film — because it's not modern in any way and it's not language-based," she said. "I just think that the silence is what makes it sort of special."

In addition to "Days of Heaven," Brooke Adams starred in another 1978 film that's now considered a masterpiece. She played Elizabeth in the remake of 1950s sci-fi film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," acting opposite Donald Sutherland in a tale of aliens coming to Earth and quietly replacing humans with pod people.

The film is incredibly creepy, and it seems to have even creeped out its star. "When I was doing 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' I was terrified at home at night by myself," she told Mubi. One of the strangest aspects of the film is a spinning-eye trick Adams does, twitching her eyes all around in a way that seems downright alien. She revealed to The Film Stage that including it was "Days of Heaven" director Terrence Malick's idea. "He had apparently called up Phil Kaufman before we did the movie and he said, 'Get her to twirl her eyes in the movie,'" she said. "Because he never thought he could use it in 'Days of Heaven,' but he really wanted to. So he said, 'You use it, Phil.'"

Adams also discussed that period in her career, where she had both "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Days of Heaven" in the can, waiting for people to see the work she'd done. "I don't think I was impatient," she said. "I was just sort of thrilled that suddenly my career was going to take off like a shot."

For many different reasons, Brooke Adams has had a complicated relationship with the concept of motherhood over the years. Her own mother, Rosalind Adams, was also an actor. "She had no confidence, she had no self-esteem. She was very beautiful. And she was a terrible drunk," Brooke recalled to Mubi. "That was hard. And I think that's definitely imprinted me in a lot of ways, of course."

In 1989, Brooke adopted her first daughter, Josie Adams. "I never wanted it to be a choice that was because I was infertile, because I didn't know that I was, and never found out that I was," she explained. "I decided to adopt and was really happy that I did."

Since becoming a mother, Brooke had to reconsider her career as an actor. She told The New York Times that she's had to put herself to the side in order to care for her children. "It's such a weird thing to be a mother. Being a mother is more like being wallpaper. It's not being the center of attention," she reflected. "And so I think for a woman who's a mother, it is very hard to be an actress, to get all excited about yourself in the center seat.”

In addition to film and television, Brooke Adams is also an accomplished stage actor. In fact, it was through a theatrical performance that she met Tony Shalhoub. The two acted together in a Broadway show called "The Heidi Chronicles" in the early 1990s. Shalhoub was instantly attracted to his co-star — so much so, that he renewed his contract so he could keep spending time with Brooke. "I re-upped for another four months, because I couldn't extricate myself," he told Martha's Vineyard Arts & Ideas. "I was so completely enamored of her that I just could not leave."

Lynne Adams, Brooke's sister, supported their relationship. In fact, they were so good together that their relationship completely changed her view of what love could be. "I lived with them for several years in the early days, and until then, I never thought marriage was something I would ever want to do," she recalled. "Then living with them, I thought: This is good, I like this. They were so compatible, they seemed to like each other so much, they had fun together."

They still get along great after all these years. Brooke is particularly proud of how much her husband pulls his weight around the house. "He loves to clean, he loves to organize, he's detail-oriented, and he loves to fix things — he's a Mr. Fix-It on top of everything," she said. "Everybody tells me, 'You're so lucky to have married this guy.'"

Growing up with a single parent can be difficult for a child when their parent finds a new romantic partner. Thankfully, that wasn't the case with Brooke Adams' daughter Josie Adams, who took to her mom's new boyfriend very well. Speaking with Martha's Vineyard Arts & Ideas, Brooke revealed that Josie's approval was a big deal in the early stages of her relationship with Tony Shalhoub. "Josie picked Tony," she said, "and he fell for her bigtime."

Joining a family that was already in progress was a big deal for Tony, too, who had been laser-focused on his career to the detriment of his personal life. "When I met Brooke, I realized, no, it didn't have to be that way," he said. "The work could be in its place, and I could also have my life, a relationship, children. I needed to be more well-rounded." As a result, he made visiting Brooke and Josie a priority whenever he could get away from filming on the show "Wings." At the time, Brooke was touring with a play. He recalled, "Every three weeks, I had a week's hiatus, so I would travel to wherever she was on the road, to meet up with her and Josie. And then we got married in April." In 1994, two years after they tied the knot, Brooke and Tony adopted their second daughter, Sophie Shalhoub. 

Having kids wasn't the only thing that made acting more difficult for Brooke Adams as she got older. Hollywood generally isn't kind to women over a certain age, and as Adams herself aged, she found herself struggling to get roles worthy of her time. Despite her impressive resume, Adams felt that the industry moved on. "I suddenly would find myself sitting in the waiting room to go in for a five-line part that they were making me read for. My ego couldn't take it; it was too depressing," she told The New York Times. 

Adams has also considered what it felt like to notice her youth fading. Whereas she'd once been talked about as one of the great screen stars thanks to roles like "Days of Heaven," people seemed to care less once she'd entered a different life stage. "I think it's especially hard for someone who was really considered a beauty. It's just very hard to suddenly become invisible when you walk on the street, not to get those looks from men," she said. "All of that stuff that you kind of take for granted and pretend you don't care about or don't like, but you rely on a lot."

Brooke Adams has explored many avenues of creativity. In addition to dancing and acting, she's also a painter, having developed a love of the craft during a hiatus from the entertainment industry. After those early television roles but before she found success in film, Adams briefly moved to Spain. "That was kind of my college years, ages 20 to 24," she told American Theatre. "I painted. I lived with a Spaniard, and was kind of a housewife for four years ... I went to Spain to escape everything, to broaden my horizons and see what I really wanted to do." 

For a while, painting occupied her time. "I bought a bunch of watercolors and a pad and I would paint everything I saw — my foot, my bed, everything in the room," she told Mubi. "Four years later I came back to the States and never even thought about painting again." Until, that is, she took up the craft once more.

Adams now has a website, Brooke Adams Art, where she shows off her artwork and offers it for sale. She does landscapes and portraits, capturing life on Martha's Vineyard and crafting scenes of happy children at play. Speaking with Mubi, she said that she now views acting and painting as two sides of the same coin. "Painting people is very much like acting," she said. "You look at the face and body and try to capture them so that the person inside is revealed."

Though Brooke Adams stopped acting regularly when she became a mother, she's still worked intermittently in the decades since. Often, her acting roles have been alongside Tony Shalhoub, her husband. They've done plays, television shows, and films together, and Brooke even appeared on several episodes of her husband's hit show "Monk."

In 2004, for example, Shalhoub directed a film called "Made Up," which was written by his sister-in-law, Lynne Adams. The film drew inspiration from Brooke's real life. "The actress having given up her career to be a mother is definitely autobiographical," Brooke told The New York Times. She went on to joke, "My husband, luckily, has not left me for a younger woman. Yet."

Thankfully, though, Brooke is not competitive about their respective careers. "It's true there can be a kind of a competition between two actors, but now I've decided I'm not an actor anymore, and it's fine," she said. "So now I'm not competing with him in that way. I'm now a painter. I love to paint, and I sell my paintings, so it's all good." That was a mindset that took work, however. "I was a big star when I met Tony, I was above the title, and suddenly I became a has-been, and he became a huge star," she reflected. "It was really important to me to get into a new head space, of not feeling like I was a has-been."

Because she's built a foundation for her career on so many levels, from film and theater to television and painting, Brooke Adams has the space to explore her own creative pursuits while her husband continues to be a major star in the industry. To that end, she also dabbles in playwriting. Speaking with Martha's Vineyard Arts & Ideas, Tony Shalhoub joked that if and when his acting career is over, Adams will support the family. "Brooke will be the main breadwinner, because unlike her, I don't have a fallback position," he said. "She's writing, she's painting, she has all these creative outlets, she's reinvented her creative side many times, while I will be left high and dry."

Adams has written several plays, many of which Shalhoub has acted in. She struggles, she said, with having a famous husband who could potentially get her work produced and shown to people, but he doesn't like to throw his weight around. "I'd like him to just make it all happen for me. I've written a play. People are always saying, 'Well, if Tony does it, you can get it done,' and so then I'm pissed off at him because he's not doing anything about it," she said. Adams went on to quip, "I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, because Tony doesn't think he can make anything happen for anyone. So my tongue is in his cheek."