Bernadette Peters (Actor)

Actress Bernadette Peters at the 7th Annual Costume Guild Awards. (Photo: Carlo Allegri / Getty Images)

Native New Yorker Bernadette Peters has been a star of stage and screen since her breakthrough role of Ruby in the 1968 Off-Broadway hit "Dames at Sea". She began her career as a child performer appearing on such TV shows as "Juvenile Jury" and "The Horn and Hardart's Children's Hour". Peters made her stage debut at age 10 in a revival of "The Most Happy Fella" and three years later toured as one of the Hollywood Blondes in "Gypsy". After completing high school, she concentrated fully on her career, landing a series of roles in several Broadway and Off-Broadway shows (e.g., "Curly McDimple" 1967). The petite voluptuous singer-actress first gained a measure of attention as Josie Cohan in the short-lived musical "George M!" before finally attaining stardom with "Dames". Since the late 60s, Peters has lent her unique and considerable talents to a variety of roles. She earned her first Tony nomination in the supporting category for her turn in the 1971 revival of "On the Town". Her performance as silent screen comedienne Mabel Normand opposite Robert Preston as Mack Sennett in Jerry Herman's flawed but fascinating "Mack and Mabel" (1974) brought her a second nomination, this time as Best Actress. In 1984, she appeared in the first of two Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musicals, the experimental "Sunday in the Park With George". Playing a dual role as a the lover of artist Georges Seurat (played by Mandy Patinkin) and her elderly descendent, Peters proved incandescent. Three years later, she portrayed the Witch in "Into the Woods". (Both performances were captured in television versions that aired in 1986 and 1991, respectively.) Sandwiched in-between, Peters won a Tony and a host of other accolades for her portrayal of an English girl adrift in America in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Song and Dance" (1985). Onstage alone for the first act, she delivered a tour-de-force, singing nearly 20 numbers that depict various stories and aspects of the character's life. Peters returned to Broadway in the ill-fated stage version of Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl" (1994) and garnered her second Tony as Annie Oakley in the 1999 Broadway revival of "Annie Get Your Gun".

Peters has also proved a capable performer on both the large and small screens, generally in comedies. She played off her sexy image as the warden's secretary who falls prey to Burt Reynolds' wiles in "The Longest Yard" (1974). Mel Brooks tapped her as his leading lady in "Silent Movie" (1976) and she performed the same duties for Steve Martin in "The Jerk" (1979). Peters gave what is perhaps her best feature performance as the frustrated schoolteacher in love with a traveling salesman (Steve Martin) in Herbert Ross' stylish and underrated "Pennies From Heaven" (1981). She seemed miscast as the hat designer in the Merchant-Ivory production "Slaves of New York" but fared better opposite Clint Eastwood in "Pink Cadillac" (both 1989). Peters was fine as the imperious mistress of Franz Liszt in James Lapine's "Impromptu" (1990) and voiced the character of Sophie in the animated hit "Anastasia" (1997). She offered a terrific performance as the eccentric matriarch of a Jewish family in the independent feature "Let It Snow" (2001; premiered at Sundance in 1999 as "Snow Days").

For much of her career, Peters has been a staple guest on variety programming like "The Carol Burnett Show" and award shows, picking up a 1978 Emmy nod for a guest appearance on "The Muppet Show" (syndicated). She has also continued a flourishing concert and recording career. Peters, however, has demonstrated her dramatic capabilities on the small screen. Her breakthrough came as the mother of a kidnapped child in the based-on-fact "David" (ABC, 1988), and she won critical kudos for her turn as televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (opposite Kevin Spacey as her husband) in the biopic "Fall From Grace" (NBC, 1990) and as a patient dying from cancer befriended by her psychologist (Mary Tyler Moore) in "The Last Best Year" (ABC, 1990). From 1992 to 1999, she lent her distinctively breathy vocal talents to the character of Rita the Cat in the animated children's series "Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs". Additionally, Peters was Circe in the NBC miniseries "The Odyssey" (1997), the stepmother in "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" (ABC, 1997) and a country and western singer in "Holiday in Your Heart" (ABC, 1997). For her 2001 recurring role as a woman seeking a divorce after her husband paid someone to seduce her on Fox's "Ally McBeal" Peters earned her second Emmy nomination.