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| Birth Name(s) : Bernadette Lazzaro |
Date of Birth: February 28, 1948 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Michael Wittenberg |
| Profession:
Actor/Musician |
Official Site
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Full Bernadette Peters Biography
Bernadette Peters made her highly anticipated solo debut in 1996 at Carnegie Hall after an already illustrious career in Broadway's most popular musicals. She now appears regularly in concert with prominent symphony orchestras across the United States.
Bernadette also provided the voice for Rita on "Animaniacs" (1993) and can be seen in TV features such as "The Odyssey" (1997) and "Cinderella" (1997). |
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Additional Bernadette Peters Biography
Peters is particularly noted for her starring roles in the stage musicals Song and Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, becoming closely associated with the composers Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and in films including The Jerk and Pennies from Heaven.
She was born Bernadette Lazzara to an Italian-American family in Queens, New York, the youngest of three children. Her mother Marguerite started her in show business by putting her on the television show Juvenile Jury at the age of three-and-a-half. She later appeared on the television shows Name That Tune and The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour. In her teen years, she attended the Quintano School for Young Professionals.
Peters returned to the New York stage after an eight-year absence in the off-Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club production, Sally and Marsha (1982), for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She then returned to Broadway as Dot/Marie in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984), followed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance (1985), Sondheim-Lapine's Into the Woods (1987), and Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl with music by Marvin Hamlisch (1993).
Peters is "considered by many to be the premier interpreter of his work," according to writer Alex Witchel. Raymond Knapp writes that Peters "achieved her definitive stardom" in Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods. Sondheim has said of Peters, "Like very few others, she sings and acts at the same time," he says. "Most performers act and then sing, act and then sing . . . Bernadette is flawless as far as I'm concerned. I can't think of anything negative." Peters continued her association with Sondheim with a 1995 benefit concert of Anyone Can Whistle. Additionally, she performed at several concerts featuring Sondheim's work, and performed for him at his 1993 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.In the PBS broadcast of Sunday in the Park with George
In her latest Broadway stage role, Peters took on the role of Mama Rose in the 2003 revival of Gypsy. Ben Brantley in his review of Gypsy wrote, "Working against type and expectation under the direction of Sam Mendes, Ms. Peters has created the most complex and compelling portrait of her long career, and she has done this in ways that deviate radically from the Merman blueprint." Arthur Laurents: "But in 2003 there was a new Rose on Broadway: Bernadette Peters! Brilliant, original, totally unlike any of the others.
In February 2006, she participated in a reading of the Sondheim-Weidman musical Bounce. On September 24, 2007, Peters participated in a one-time only charity reading of the play Love Letters with her former Gypsy co-star, John Dossett.
She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award (Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role) for her work in the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie.
She recently appeared with three generations of the Kirk Douglas family in It Runs in the Family. In May 2006 she filmed a movie Come le formiche (Wine and Kisses) with F. Murray Abraham in Italy; the DVD was released on June 22, 2007 in Italy.
Peters has recently made guest appearances on several popular television series, appearing as a judge on the ABC series, Boston Legal (May 2007), as a defense attorney on the NBC series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (November 2006), and as the sharp-tongued sister of Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) on the penultimate episode of NBC's Will & Grace ("Whatever Happened to Baby Gin?").
In a review of her 2002 Radio City Music Hall concert, Steven Holden of the New York Times described Peters as "the peaches-and-cream embodiment of an ageless storybook princess... inside a giant soap bubble floating toward heaven. A belief in the power of the dreams behind 's songs, if not in their reality, was possible."
Major Concert appearances
- Various venues, summer of 1989: 10-city concert tour with Peter Allen
- Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California on September 6 and 7, 1996
- Carnegie Hall, New York City on December 9, 1996 (recorded on CD)
- Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia on January 7 & 8, 1998
- Royal Festival Hall, London on September 17, 1998 (recorded on video)
- Radio City Music Hall, New York City on June 19, 2002
- Lincoln Center (Avery Fisher Hall), New York City, on May 1, 2006
Peters has received many honorary awards over the years, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (April 1987); the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year (1987); the Sarah Siddons Award for outstanding performance in a Chicago theatrical production (1994); the American Theatre Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre in New York City (1996), becoming the youngest person so honored (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Christopher Rawson, January 25, 1996, p. C1); an Honorary Doctorate from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York (May 19, 2002); and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame (June 28, 2002).
The actress married Michael Wittenberg (investment adviser with Wachovia Securities) on July 20, 1996 at the upstate New York home of Mary Tyler Moore. Wittenberg died at age 43 on September 26, 2005 in a helicopter crash in Montenegro while on a business trip. Three other people were killed in the crash, which occurred when the aircraft struck a high-voltage cable according to the police in Montenegro's capital. |
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Bernadette Peters Quote(s)
| You gotta be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for? |
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