This intimate documentary explores the life and career of the stage legend Stephen Sondheim through six of his best-known songs.
12-09-2013
1h 26m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Directors:
Autumn de Wilde, James Lapine, Todd Haynes
Production:
SD Entertainment, HBO Documentary Films
Key Crew
Cinematography:
Bradford Young
Producer:
Nancy Abraham
Executive Producer:
Susan Benaroya
Line Producer:
Gwen Bialic
Producer:
Pamela Koffler
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Audra McDonald
Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. Primarily known for her work on the Broadway stage, she has won six Tony Awards, more performance wins than any other actor, and is the only person to win in all four acting categories. She has performed in musicals, operas, and dramas such as A Moon for the Misbegotten, 110 in the Shade, Carousel, Ragtime, Master Class, and Porgy and Bess. In addition to her six Tony Awards, she has received numerous accolades including two Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2016 from President Barack Obama and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.
Darren Everett Criss (born February 5, 1987) is an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He rose to fame starring on the television series Glee (2010–2015) and received Emmy and Golden Globe acting awards for his leading role as spree killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (2018). He has also appeared on Broadway and in film and has released several musical albums.
A founding member and co-owner of StarKid Productions, a musical theater company based in Chicago, Criss first garnered attention playing the lead role of Harry Potter in, and writing most of the music and lyrics for, StarKid's musical production of A Very Potter Musical. Criss has also starred on Broadway as a replacement in both How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In 2015, Criss co-founded Elsie Fest which is touted as "New York City's first outdoor music festival celebrating tunes from the stage and screen".
In March 2017, Criss debuted his indie pop band Computer Games along with his brother Chuck Criss. In addition to his music endeavors, Criss starred in the second installment of Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story. Subtitled The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018), Criss's portrayal of spree killer Andrew Cunanan received acclaim from critics, and earned him an Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries, or Television Film.
America Georgina Ferrera (/fəˈrɛərə/; born April 18, 1984) is an American actress, director and television producer. She has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2007 and 2024, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world and in 2023, she was named in BBC's 100 Women list.
Ferrera developed an interest in acting at a young age, performing in several stage productions at her school. She made her feature film debut in 2002 with the comedy-drama Real Women Have Curves, earning praise for her performance. She achieved modest success early in her career with roles in films such as the comedy-dramas Gotta Kick It Up! (2002) and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (2005). She garnered further critical acclaim and recognition for her starring role as Betty Suarez in the ABC comedy-drama series Ugly Betty (2006–2010). For her performance, she won a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, the first for a Latina woman in the category.
Ferrera's other film roles include the drama The Dry Land (2010), the romantic comedy Our Family Wedding (2010), the crime drama End of Watch (2012), and the fantasy comedy Barbie (2023), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also voiced Astrid Hofferson in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise (2010–2019) and co-produced and starred in the NBC workplace comedy series Superstore (2015–2021).
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Among the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim was praised for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication". His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience" with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.
Sondheim started his theatre career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) before becoming a composer and lyricist. Sondheim's best-known works include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).
Sondheim's accolades include eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has a theater named for him both on Broadway and in the West End of London. Sondheim wrote film music, contributing "Goodbye for Now" for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981). He wrote five songs for 1990's Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Film adaptations of Sondheim's work include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Gypsy (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), West Side Story (2021), and Merrily We Roll Along (TBD).
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and radio presenter. As the founder, frontman, lyricist, and sole consistent member of the band Pulp, he became a figurehead of the Britpop genre of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus, Cocker has pursued a solo career, and for seven years he presented the BBC Radio 6 Music show Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service.
Yvonne De Carlo (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced (1945); Anna in Criss Cross (1949); Sephora the wife of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), starring Charlton Heston; and Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957) with Clark Gable. In the early 1960s, De Carlo accepted the offer to play Lily Munster for the CBS television series The Munsters, alongside Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis.
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Jackie Hoffman was born on November 29, 1960. She is an actress and writer, known for Garden State (2004), A Dirty Shame (2004) and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003).
Dean Jones (1931–2015) was an American actor. Jones is best known for his leading roles in several Walt Disney movies between 1965 and 1977, most notably The Love Bug.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (October 16, 1925 - October 11, 2022) was a British-American actress and singer who has appeared in theater, television, and film roles. Her career was spanned almost eight decades, much of it in the United States. Her work has received international attention. Her first film appearance was in the 1944 film Gaslight as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).
She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her 12 year run as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the U.S. television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 to 1996. Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee, Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.
Respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, an Honorary Academy Award, and has been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and eighteen Emmy Awards.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Angela Lansbury, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Bette Midler (born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, comedian, and film producer. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several Off-Off-Broadway plays, prior to her engagements in Fiddler on the Roof and Salvation on Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse where she managed to build up a core following. Since 1970, Midler has released 14 studio albums as a solo artist. Throughout her career, many of her songs became hits on the record charts, including her renditions of "The Rose", "Wind Beneath My Wings", "Do You Want to Dance", "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", and "From a Distance".
In a career spanning almost half a century, Midler has won three Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. She has sold over 30 million records worldwide, and has received four Gold, three Platinum, and three Multiplatinum albums by RIAA.
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Barbara Barrie (born Barbara Ann Berman, May 23, 1931) is an American actress of film, stage and television. She is also an accomplished author.
Her film breakthrough came in 1964 with her performance as Julie in the landmark film One Potato, Two Potato, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. She is best known for her role as Evelyn Stoller in Breaking Away, which brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 and an Emmy Award nomination in 1981 when she reprised the role in the television series based on the film.
On television she is perhaps best known for her portrayal, between 1975 and 1978, of the wife of the namesake captain in the detective sitcom Barney Miller. Barrie also is known for her extensive work in the theatre, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1971 for originating the role of Sarah in Stephen Sondheim's Company.
Susan Browning was born on February 25, 1941 in Baldwin, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Sabrina (1995), The World According to Garp (1982) and Sister Act (1992).
Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress. In a career spanning over five decades of screen and stage, she has received numerous accolades, including three Primetime Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for eight Academy Awards and three Grammy Awards. She is one of the few performers to be nominated for the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT. In 2009, she received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2016, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Glenn Close, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
George Coe (May 10, 1929 – July 18, 2015) was an American actor. He was a cast member for the first season of Saturday Night Live and voiced the character of Woodhouse in Archer.
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 9 December 1934) is an English film, stage and television actress.
Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. She branched into film work, and won a BAFTA Award as Most Promising Newcomer; however, most of her work during this period was in theatre. Not generally known as a singer, she drew strong reviews for her leading role in the musical Cabaret in 1968.
During the next two decades, she established herself as one of the most significant British theatre performers, working for the National Theatre Company and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In television, she achieved success during this period, in the series A Fine Romance from 1981 until 1984 and in 1992 began a continuing role in the television romantic comedy series As Time Goes By.
Her film appearances were infrequent until she was cast as M in GoldenEye (1995), a role she played in each James Bond film until Skyfall (2012). She received several notable film awards for her role as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown (1997), and has since been acclaimed for her work in such films as Shakespeare in Love (1998), Chocolat (2000), Iris (2001), Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and Notes on a Scandal (2006), and the television production The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2001).
Regarded by critics as one of the greatest actresses of the post-war period, and frequently named as the leading British actress in polls, Dench has received many award nominations for her acting in theatre, film and television; her awards include ten BAFTAs, seven Laurence Olivier Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award.
She was married to actor Michael Williams from 1971 until his death in 2001. They are the parents of actress Finty Williams.
Hugh Michael Jackman (born October 12, 1968) is an Australian actor. Beginning in theatre and television, he landed his breakthrough role as Wolverine / Logan in the X-Men film series (2000–2017), a tenure that earned him the Guinness World Record for "longest career as a live-action Marvel superhero". Jackman has received a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards. During his career, Jackman has headlined films in various genres, including the romantic comedy Kate & Leopold (2001), the action-horror Van Helsing (2004), the drama The Prestige (2006), the period romance Australia (2008), the epic musical Les Misérables (2012), the thriller Prisoners (2013), the musical The Greatest Showman (2017), the political drama The Front Runner (2018), and the crime thriller Bad Education (2019). For his role as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, Jackman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and for The Greatest Showman, he received a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album. He also provided voice roles in the animated films Flushed Away (2006), Rise of the Guardians (2012), and Missing Link (2019). Jackman is also known for his early theatre roles in Oklahoma! in 1998 and Carousel in 2002. On Broadway, Jackman won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role in The Boy from Oz. In 2021 he returned to the theatre as Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of The Music Man. A four-time host of the Tony Awards, he won an Emmy Award for hosting the 2005 ceremony. He also hosted the 81st Academy Awards in 2009. Jackman was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to performing arts and to the global community.
Glynis Johns (October 5, 1923 - January 4, 2024) was a South African-born British actress, dancer, musician and singer. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, while her parents were on tour, she is best known for originating the role of Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award, and for playing Winifred Banks in Walt Disney's musical motion picture Mary Poppins. In 2020, with the death of Olivia de Havilland, Johns became the oldest living Academy Award-nominee in any acting category.
In both roles, Johns sang songs written specifically for her, including "Send in the Clowns", composed by Stephen Sondheim, and "Sister Suffragette", written by the Sherman Brothers.
Johns was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the 1960 film The Sundowners. She was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and class years of British cinema. She is known for the breathy quality of her husky voice and her upbeat persona.
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Patricia Louise Holte (born May 24, 1944), known professionally as Patti LaBelle, is an American R&B singer and actress. She has been referred to as the "Godmother of Soul". In a career which has spanned seven decades, LaBelle has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. She has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, and the Apollo Theater Hall of Fame. She was included in Rolling Stone on their list of 100 Greatest Singers.
She began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and frontwoman of the vocal group Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. After the group's name change to Labelle in the 1970s, they released the popular number-one hit "Lady Marmalade". As a result, after the group split in 1976, she began a successful solo career, starting with her critically acclaimed debut album, which included the career-defining song, "You Are My Friend". She became a mainstream solo star in 1984 following the success of the singles "If Only You Knew", "Love, Need and Want You" (later sampled for 2002's "Dilemma"), "New Attitude" and "Stir It Up". Less than two years later in 1986, she scored a number-one album Winner in You and its number-one duet single, "On My Own", with Michael McDonald.
She won a 1992 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for her 1991 album Burnin', an album that featured "Somebody Loves You Baby (You Know Who It Is)", "Feels Like Another One", and "When You've Been Blessed (Feels Like Heaven)". She won a second Grammy for the live album Live! One Night Only.
She has also had success as an actress with a role in the Oscar-nominated film A Soldier's Story, and in TV shows such as A Different World and American Horror Story: Freak Show. In 1992, she starred in her own TV sitcom Out All Night.
In 2002, LaBelle hosted her own lifestyle TV show, Living It Up with Patti LaBelle on TV One. In 2015, LaBelle took part in the dance competition Dancing with the Stars at the age of 70.
She has also seen success launching her own brand of bedding, cookbooks, and food for various companies. In 2015 her Patti's Sweet Potato Pie sold millions when a YouTube video praising the product went viral. As a result, over a 72-hour period, Walmart sold one pie every second.
Around 1964, LaBelle was engaged to Otis Williams, founding member of The Temptations. The engagement lasted a year before Patti broke it off after fearing Williams would force her to move to Detroit and retire from the road.
On July 23, 1969, she married a longtime friend, Armstead Edwards, who was a schoolteacher. After she started her solo career, Edwards became her manager, a position he would remain in until 2000. That year, she and Edwards legally separated, with their divorce finalized in 2003. They have a son, Zuri Kye Edwards (born July 17, 1973), who is now her manager.
She said that because of her sisters and parents dying "before their time", she wrote in her autobiography that she feared she would not make it to 50.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick, January 8, 1911 – April 26, 1970) was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper and vedette famous for her striptease act. Also an actress, author, and playwright, her 1957 memoir was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy which inspired the 1962 musical comedy-drama film Gypsy.
From Wikipedia.
Ethel Merman (January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "It's De-Lovely", "Friendship", "You're the Top", "Anything Goes", and "There's No Business Like Show Business", which later became her theme song.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Donna Murphy (born March 7, 1959) is an American stage, film, television actress and singer. Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens. She received three more Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Wonderful Town as Ruth Sherwood,Lovemusik as Lotte Lenya and The People in the Picture as Raisel/Bubbie. She is known, most recently, for her role as Mother Gothel in the animated Disney film Tangled (2010), Anij, Captain Jean-Luc Picard's love interest, in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and her numerous stage roles in musical theatre.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Donna Murphy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Born in Hamilton, Ohio, Myers made her stage debut in Stephen Sondheim's Company (for which she received a Tony Award nomination) and her television debut with an appearance on Happy Days as Mitzi.
Myers appeared in a number of television guest appearances, most prominently as the announcer on Sha Na Na and in a number of different parts on Alice. However, she remained best known for her musical roles.
Mandy Patinkin is an American stage, film and television actor and tenor vocalist. Patinkin is a noted interpreter of the music of Stephen Sondheim and is known for his work in musical theatre, originating iconic roles such as Georges Seurat in Sunday in the Park with George, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden and Burrs in The Wild Party. He has also appeared in television series' such as Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me, the first two seasons of Criminal Minds, and Homeland. His most noted film role was as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
Bernadette Peters (born February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer, and children's book author. Over a career spanning five 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 nominations for Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, 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).
Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenaged actress in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films including Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. Peters continues to act on stage, in films and on television in such series as Smash and Mozart in the Jungle. She has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.
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Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers".
His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (for his performance in From Here to Eternity). He signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records (finding success with albums such as Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy.
Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way". With sales of his music dwindling and after appearing in several poorly received films, Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971. Two years later, however, he came out of retirement and in 1973 recorded several albums, scoring a Top 40 hit with "(Theme From) New York, New York" in 1980. Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally, until a short time before his death in 1998.
Sinatra also forged a successful career as a film actor, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity, a nomination for Best Actor for The Man with the Golden Arm, and critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate. He also starred in such musicals as High Society, Pal Joey, Guys and Dolls and On the Town. Sinatra was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Barbara Joan 'Barbra' Streisand (born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers awarded an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT).
With sales exceeding 150 million records worldwide, she is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the second highest-certified female artist in the United States, with 68.5 million certified album units. Billboard ranked her as the greatest female artist on the Billboard 200 chart and the top Adult Contemporary female artist of all time. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, 10 Grammy Awards including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Grammy Legend Award, five Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and nine Golden Globes.
She began her career by performing in nightclubs and Broadway theaters in the early 1960s. Following her guest appearances on various television shows, she signed to Columbia Records, insisting that she retain full artistic control, and accepting lower pay in exchange, an arrangement that continued throughout her career, and released her debut The Barbra Streisand Album (1963), which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
Throughout her recording career, she has topped the US Billboard 200 chart with 11 albums—a record for a woman—including People (1964), The Way We Were (1974), Guilty (1980), and The Broadway Album (1985). She also achieved five number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100—"The Way We Were", "Evergreen", "You Don't Bring Me Flowers", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "Woman in Love".
Following her established recording success in the 1960s, she ventured into film by the end of that decade. She starred in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl (1968), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Additional fame followed with films including the extravagant musical Hello, Dolly! (1969), the screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), and the romantic drama The Way We Were (1973). She won a second Academy Award for writing the love theme from A Star Is Born (1976), the first woman to be honored as a composer.
With the release of Yentl (1983), she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won an Oscar for Best Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical. She also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, becoming the first (and for 37 years, the only) woman to win that award. She later directed The Prince of Tides (1991) and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Elaine Bawson Stritch (born February 2, 1925) is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs. She is known for her performance of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in Stephen Sondheim's 1970 musical Company, her 2001 one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and recently for her role as Jack Donaghy's mother Colleen on NBC's 30 Rock. She has been nominated for the Tony Award four times in various categories, and won for Elaine Stritch at Liberty.
William "Will" Swenson (born October 26, 1972) is an American actor,writer and film director best known for his work in musical theatre. He also has developed a film career, primarily in Mormon cinema.
Cher (born Cheryl Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Dubbed the "Goddess of Pop", she is known for her androgynous contralto voice, multifaceted career, bold visual presentation and continuous reinvention of her image and sound. Her adaptability has fueled multiple comebacks, cementing her status as a cultural icon over a career spanning seven decades. Cher gained fame in 1965 as part of the folk rock husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher, while also achieving solo success with top-ten singles including "All I Really Want to Do" and "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)". In the 1970s, she divorced from Sonny Bono and topped the US Billboard Hot 100 with "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves", "Half-Breed" and "Dark Lady", becoming the female solo artist with the most number-one singles in US history at the time.
Following a hiatus to focus on acting, Cher returned to music with the rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989) and Love Hurts (1991), earning international number-one singles with "If I Could Turn Back Time" and "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)". She reached a commercial peak with the dance-pop album Believe (1998), which introduced the "Cher effect", an extreme, stylistic use of Auto-Tune to distort vocals. The title track became 1999's number-one song in the US and the UK's best-selling single by a female artist. 21st-century releases include Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018), both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US.
Cher rose to television stardom in the 1970s with her CBS shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, attracting over 30 million weekly viewers, and the namesake Cher. She made her Broadway debut in 1982 with Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in its film adaptation. She earned critical acclaim for roles in Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985) and Moonstruck (1987), winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for the latter. Cher went on to star in Mermaids (1990), If These Walls Could Talk (1996), where she made her directorial debut, Tea with Mussolini (1999), Burlesque (2010) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). Her life and career inspired the 2018 jukebox musical The Cher Show.
With 100 million records sold, Cher is among the world's best-selling music artists. Her accolades include an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, three Golden Globes, the Billboard Icon Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, honors from the Kennedy Center and the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cher is the only solo artist with a number-one single on a Billboard chart in seven consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour was the highest-grossing concert tour by a female artist at the time, earning US$250 million (about $390 million in 2023). Cher is also known for her fashion, political views, social media presence, philanthropy and activism, including LGBTQ rights and HIV/AIDS prevention.
