Background and Age

Barbara Niven was born Barbara Lee Bucholz on February 26, 1953, in Portland, Oregon. She was very interested in acting and singing from a young age. She used to act in plays at her school and also performed at her friends' birthday parties.

Marriage, Husband, and Kids

Niven's first marriage was to Ronald Garrison in 1974. Their marriage lasted for a decade. She then married David Niven Jr. in 1993 but got divorced five years later in 1998. She has a daughter named Jessica Niven. Jessica gave her two grandkids, River and Sasha.

Career and Net Worth

It wasn't until she was in her 30s when Barbara Niven started her professional acting career. She bravely moved to Los Angeles as a single mother of a young daughter in order to pursue her dreams. She formally studied acting at the famous Beverly Hills Playhouse, which is one of Los Angeles' oldest and most respected acting schools. Other students of the Playhouse include George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Tom Selleck, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tony Catherine Bell, and Patrick Swayze.

Barbara Niven is best known for her recurring roles on the soap operas, The Bold and the Beautiful as Brenda Dickerson and One Life to Live as Liz Coleman Reynolds. She has had numerous roles in television series including ER, Cold Case, Pensacola: Wings of Gold, NCIS, Charmed, Eli Stone, Pacific Palisades, and Silk Stalkings. She appeared in several Lifetime movies including Stranger in My Bed (2005), The Perfect Neighbor (2005), Double Cross (2006), Murder in My House (2006), A Valentine Carol (2007), Dead at 17 (2008), Accused at 17 (2009), Heat Wave (2009), My Mother's Secret (2012), and The Wife He Met Online (2012).

Outside of television, she was honored to play the role of Marilyn Monroe in the HBO feature film The Rat Pack in 1998. She also had roles in Under Lock and Key (1995), Forest Warrior (1996), Foxfire (1996), Breast Men (1997), The Drone Virus (2004), Chasing Ghosts (2005), Redline (2007), Summer's Blood (2009), A Perfect Ending (2012) and Suburban Gothic (2014).

Barbara credits the film A Perfect Ending (2012) as the transformational role that changed her life and encouraged her to reach others. The story centered around Rebecca, "a bored, middle-aged, judgmental and rigid 'housewife from the burbs." She realizes that, as a mother of three grown children, she has lost herself in an unhappy marriage and neglected her own needs. She turns to her best friends, a lesbian couple, who took her on a journey of self-discovery.

The project had an extremely low budget ($175,000), however, none of the actors participated with a goal to make money. "This experience all the way through, even to now, has been everything I wanted it to be when I first wanted to be an actress", Niven stated.

Barbara has a website, barabaniven.com, in which she labels herself a video marketing coach, actress, and speaker. She advertises herself as Hollywood's Top Media Trainer and shows instructional videos on public speaking, client interest, and sales generation. She offers live coaching sessions as well as a "boot camp" for interested clients.