Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters (née Lazzara; born February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer, and children's book author. Over a career spanning more than six decades, she has starred in musical theatre, television and film, performed in solo concerts and released recordings. She is a critically acclaimed Broadway performer, having received seven nominations for Tony Awards, winning two (plus an honorary award), and nine Drama Desk Award nominations, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Bernadette Peters
February 28, 1948
- Actress
- singer
- author
1958–present
Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim,[1] Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including in the musicals Mack and Mabel (1974), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Song and Dance (1985), Into the Woods (1987), The Goodbye Girl (1993), Annie Get Your Gun (1999), Gypsy (2003), A Little Night Music (2010), Follies (2011), and Hello, Dolly! (2018).[2] She has recorded six solo albums as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act.
Peters first performed on the stage as a child actress and then a teenager in the 1960s, and in film and television from the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on, among other programs, The Muppet Show and The Carol Burnett Show, and for her roles in films including Silent Movie (1976), The Jerk (1979), Pennies from Heaven (1981, for which she won a Golden Globe Award), and Annie (1982). She has also acted in television shows such as Ally McBeal, Smash (2012–2013), Mozart in the Jungle (2014–2018), The Good Fight (2017–2018), Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (2020–2021) and High Desert (2023).
Early life and family[edit]
Peters was born into an Italian-American family in Ozone Park in the New York City borough of Queens, the youngest of three children.[3] Her mother, Marguerite (née Maltese),[4] started her in show business by putting her on the television show Juvenile Jury at the age of three and a half. Her father, Peter Lazzara, drove a bread delivery truck.[5] Her siblings are casting director Donna DeSeta[6] and Joseph Lazzara.[5] She appeared on the television shows Name That Tune and several times on The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour as a small child.[7]
Career[edit]
1958–1974: Child actor[edit]
In January 1958, at age nine, she obtained her Actors Equity Card in the name Bernadette Peters to avoid ethnic typecasting, with the stage name taken from her father's first name. She made her professional stage debut the same month in This Is Goggle, a comedy directed by Otto Preminger that closed during out-of-town tryouts before reaching New York.[8] She then appeared on NBC television as Anna Stieman in A Boy Called Ciske, a Kraft Mystery Theatre production, in May 1958, and in a vignette entitled "Miracle in the Orphanage", part of "The Christmas Tree", a Hallmark Hall of Fame production, in December 1958,[9] with fellow child actor Richard Thomas and veteran actors Jessica Tandy and Margaret Hamilton.[10] She first appeared on the New York stage at age 10 as Tessie in the New York City Center revival of The Most Happy Fella (1959).[11] In her teen years, she attended Quintano's School for Young Professionals, a now-defunct private school.[8]
At age 13, Peters appeared as one of the "Hollywood Blondes" and was an understudy for "Dainty June" in the second national tour of Gypsy.[12] During this tour, Peters first met her long-time accompanist, conductor and arranger Marvin Laird, who was the assistant conductor for the tour. Laird recalled, "I heard her sing an odd phrase or two and thought, 'God that's a big voice out of that little girl'".[13] The next summer, she played Dainty June in summer stock, and in 1962 she recorded her first single. In 1964, she played Liesl in The Sound of Music and Jenny in Riverwind in summer stock at the Mt. Gretna Playhouse (Pennsylvania), and Riverwind again at the Bucks County Playhouse in 1966.[14][15][16] Upon graduation from high school, she started working steadily, appearing Off-Broadway in the musicals The Penny Friend (1966) and Curley McDimple (1967)[11] and as a standby on Broadway in The Girl in the Freudian Slip (1967). She made her Broadway debut in Johnny No-Trump in 1967, and next appeared as George M. Cohan's sister Josie opposite Joel Grey in George M! (1968), winning the Theatre World Award.[17]
Peters's performance as "Ruby" in the 1968 Off-Broadway production of Dames at Sea, a parody of 1930s musicals, brought her critical acclaim and her first Drama Desk Award.[11] She had appeared in an earlier 1966 version of Dames at Sea at the Off-Off-Broadway performance club Caffe Cino.[18][19][20] Peters had starring roles in her next Broadway vehicles—Gelsomina in the 1969 musical version of the Italian film of the same name, La Strada (for which she won good reviews but the show closed after one performance) and Hildy in a revival of On the Town (1971), for which she received her first Tony Award nomination. She played Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel (1974), receiving another Tony nomination. Clive Barnes wrote: "With the splashy Mack & Mabel ... diminutive and contralto Bernadette Peters found herself as a major Broadway star."[21] The Mack and Mabel cast album became popular among musical theatre fans.[11] She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to concentrate on television and film work.