Patti LuPone

Actress/singer Patti LuPone was born April 21, 1949 in Northport, NY; the great-grandniece of coloratura Adelina Patti, as a teen she performed with her twin brothers William and Robert as the LuPone Trio before attending the Juilliard School, studying under Maria Callas and counting among her classmates Kevin Kline and Mandy Patinkin. A founding member of John Houseman's The Acting Company, LuPone starred on Broadway and on tour in productions including The Three Sisters, The School for Scandal and Edward II, and in 1976 she earned Tony and Drama Desk nominations for her work in the musical The Robber Bridegroom. After making her film debut in 1978's The King of the Gypsies, LuPone rose to international stardom portraying the title role in the smash Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, a role which earned her both Tony and Drama Desk honors in 1980; she played the role of Fantine in 1985 for Les Miserables, a performance which (combined with her work in a revival of The Cradle Will Rock) won an Olivier Award, the first ever given to an American actress. After winning her second Drama Desk Award in 1988 for her work in Anything Goes, LuPone turned to television, starring for four seasons in the ABC drama Life Goes On; in 1993, she starred in the London production of Webber's Sunset Boulevard, but in a highly controversial and much-publicized move she was replaced by Glenn Close for the show's Broadway run. Her one-woman show Patti LuPone on Broadway earned an Outer Critics Circle Award in 1996; the album Matters of the Heart followed in 1999.