Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play
Encyclopedia
This is a list of the winners and nominations of Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 for Best Actress in a Play. The award has been presented since 1947, and is for performance in new productions or revivals.

1940s

  • 1947: Helen Hayes
    Helen Hayes
    Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

     – Happy Birthday
    Happy Birthday (play)
    Happy Birthday is a play written by Anita Loos. It opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on October 31, 1946 and closed on March 13, 1948, after 564 performances. It starred Helen Hayes, for whom it was written. The story involves Addie, a mousy librarian who becomes enamoured of a handsome...

    as Addie and Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...

     – Joan of Lorraine
    Joan of Lorraine
    Joan of Lorraine is a 1946 play-within-a-play by Maxwell Anderson. It is about an acting company who stages a dramatization of the story of Joan of Arc and the effect that the story has on them. As in the musical Man of La Mancha, most of the actors in the drama play two or more roles...

    as Mary Grey
  • 1948: Judith Anderson
    Judith Anderson
    Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...

     – Medea
    Medea (play)
    Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...

    as Medea
    Jessica Tandy
    Jessica Tandy
    Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...

     - A Streetcar Named Desire
    A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
    A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

    as Blanche Dubois
    Katharine Cornell
    Katharine Cornell
    Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.Cornell is known as the greatest American stage actress of the 20th century...

     - Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...

    as Cleopatra

  • 1949: Martita Hunt
    Martita Hunt
    Martita Hunt was an English theatre and film actress.-Early life:Hunt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 30 January 1900 to British parents Alfred and Marta Hunt...

     – The Madwoman of Chaillot
    The Madwoman of Chaillot
    The Madwoman of Chaillot is a play, a poetic satire, by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux, written in 1943 and first performed in 1945, after his death. The play has two acts and follows the convention of the classical unities...

    as Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot


1950s

  • 1950: Shirley Booth
    Shirley Booth
    Shirley Booth was an American actress.Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950...

     – Come Back, Little Sheba
    Come Back, Little Sheba (play)
    Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1950 play by the American dramatist William Inge. The play was Inge's first, written while he was a teacher at Washington University in St...

    as Lola
  • 1951: Uta Hagen
    Uta Hagen
    Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...

     – The Country Girl
    The Country Girl
    The Country Girl may refer to:* The Country Girl , a 1915 silent film, based on an 18th-century play by David Garrick* The Country Girl , a 1954 film based on a play by Clifford Odets, starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly...

    as Georgie Elgin
  • 1952: Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

     – I Am a Camera
    I Am a Camera
    I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play inspired by Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin which is part of The Berlin Stories...

    as Sally Bowles
  • 1953: Shirley Booth
    Shirley Booth
    Shirley Booth was an American actress.Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950...

     – Time of the Cuckoo as Leona Samish
  • 1954: Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

     – Ondine as Ondine
  • 1955: Nancy Kelly
    Nancy Kelly
    Nancy Kelly was an American actress, who was a movie leading lady in the 1930s, making 36 movies between 1926 and 1977, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James , which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone...

     – The Bad Seed
    The Bad Seed (play)
    The Bad Seed was a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson adapted from the novel of that name by William March, and was in turn adapted by John Lee Mahin into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name directed by Mervyn Leroy. Staged by Reginald Denham, it opened...

    as Christine Penmark

  • 1956: Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

     – The Lark as Joan of Arc
    • Barbara Bel Geddes
      Barbara Bel Geddes
      Barbara Bel Geddes was an American actress, artist and children's author. She is best known for her role in the television drama series Dallas as matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing. Bel Geddes also starred in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the role of Maggie...

       – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...

    • Gladys Cooper
      Gladys Cooper
      Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....

       – The Chalk Garden
      The Chalk Garden
      The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered on Broadway in 1955. The play tells the story of Mrs. St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under Miss Madrigal's care. The setting of the play was inspired by Bagnold's own garden at North End House in Rottingdean, near...

    • Ruth Gordon
      Ruth Gordon
      Ruth Gordon Jones , better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her film roles such as Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's overly solicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby, as the eccentric Maude in Harold and Maude and as the mother of Orville Boggs in the...

       – The Matchmaker
      The Matchmaker
      The Matchmaker is a play by Thornton Wilder.The play has a long and colorful history. John Oxenford's 1835 one-act farce A Day Well Spent had been extended into a full-length play entitled Einen Jux will er sich machen by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy in 1842...

    • Siobhán McKenna
      Siobhán McKenna
      Siobhán McKenna was an Irish stage and screen actress.-Background:Born Siobhán Giollamhuire Nic Cionnaith in Belfast, Northern Ireland into a Catholic and nationalist family, she grew up in Galway City and in County Monaghan, Ireland speaking fluent Irish...

       – The Chalk Garden
      The Chalk Garden
      The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered on Broadway in 1955. The play tells the story of Mrs. St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under Miss Madrigal's care. The setting of the play was inspired by Bagnold's own garden at North End House in Rottingdean, near...

    • Susan Strasberg
      Susan Strasberg
      Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American film and stage actress.-Background and career:Strasberg was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio and former actress Paula Strasberg...

       – The Diary of Anne Frank
      The Diary of Anne Frank (play)
      The Diary of Anne Frank is a stage adaptation of the book The Diary of a Young Girl. The play is a dramatization by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. It opened at the Cort Theatre, Broadway, on October 5, 1955, in a production by Kermit Bloomgarden, directed by Garson Kanin and designed by Boris...


  • 1957: Margaret Leighton – Separate Tables
    Separate Tables
    Separate Tables is the collective name of two one-act plays written by Sir Terence Rattigan, both taking place in the Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, a seaside town on the south coast of England. The first play, entitled "Table by the Window", focuses on the troubled relationship between a...

    as Mrs. Shankland/Miss Railton-Bell
    • Florence Eldridge
      Florence Eldridge
      Florence Eldridge was an American actress.-Personal life:...

       – Long Day's Journey into Night
      Long Day's Journey Into Night
      Long Day's Journey Into Night is a 1956 drama in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play is widely considered to be his masterwork...

    • Rosalind Russell
      Rosalind Russell
      Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...

       – Auntie Mame
      Auntie Mame
      Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many...

    • Sybil Thorndike
      Sybil Thorndike
      Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike CH DBE was a British actress.-Early life:She was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to Arthur Thorndike and Agnes Macdonald. Her father was a Canon of Rochester Cathedral...

       – The Potting Shed
      The Potting Shed
      The Potting Shed is a play by Graham Greene. The psychological drama centers on a secret held by the Callifer family for nearly thirty years....


  • 1958: Helen Hayes
    Helen Hayes
    Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

     in Time Remembered
    Time Remembered
    -Track listing:# "Danny Boy" - 10:41# "Like Someone in Love" - 6:27# "In Your Own Sweet Way" - 2:58# "Easy to Love" - 4:42...

    as The Duchess of Pont-Au-Bronc
    • Wendy Hiller
      Wendy Hiller
      Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...

       – A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night...

    • Eugenie Leontovich
      Eugenie Leontovich
      Eugenie Leontovich was a Russian-born stage actress with a distinguished career in theatre, film and television. She was described as "[o]ne of the most colourful figures of the 20th-century theatre, a successful actress, producer, playwright and teacher."...

       – The Cave Dwellers
    • Siobhán McKenna
      Siobhán McKenna
      Siobhán McKenna was an Irish stage and screen actress.-Background:Born Siobhán Giollamhuire Nic Cionnaith in Belfast, Northern Ireland into a Catholic and nationalist family, she grew up in Galway City and in County Monaghan, Ireland speaking fluent Irish...

       – The Rope Dancers
    • Mary Ure
      Mary Ure
      Eileen Mary Ure was a Scottish actress of stage and film.-Early life:Born in Glasgow where she studied at the school of drama, Ure was the daughter of civil engineer Colin McGregor Ure and Edith Swinburne. She went to the independent Mount School in York and trained for the stage at the Central...

       – Look Back in Anger
      Look Back in Anger
      Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...

    • Jo Van Fleet
      Jo Van Fleet
      Jo Van Fleet was an American theatre and film actress.-Career:Van Fleet established herself as a notable dramatic actress on Broadway over several years, winning a Tony Award in 1954 for her skill in a difficult role, playing an unsympathetic, even abusive character, in Horton Foote's The Trip to...

       – Look Homeward, Angel
      Look Homeward, Angel (play)
      Look Homeward, Angel is an acclaimed 1957 stage play by the playwright Ketti Frings. It opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre November 28, 1957, and ran for a total of 564 performances, closing on April 4, 1959....


  • 1959: Gertrude Berg
    Gertrude Berg
    Gertrude Berg was an American actress and screenwriter. A pioneer of classic radio, she was one of the first women to create, write, produce and star in a long-running hit when she premiered her serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs , later known as The Goldbergs.-Career:Berg was born...

     – A Majority of One
    A Majority of One
    -Plot:The comedy involves Mrs. Jacoby, a Jewish widow from Brooklyn, New York, and Koichi Asano, a millionaire widower from Tokyo. Mrs. Jacoby is sailing to Japan with her daughter and foreign service officer son-in-law who is being posted to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo...

    as Mrs. Jacoby
    • Claudette Colbert
      Claudette Colbert
      Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...

       – The Marriage-Go-Round
      The Marriage-Go-Round
      The Marriage-Go-Round is a 1958 play written by Leslie Stevens and a 1961 film adaptation also written and produced by Stevens. It was inspired by a suggestion that dancer Isadora Duncan supposedly made to playwright George Bernard Shaw: the two of them should have a child because "with your mind...

    • Lynn Fontanne
      Lynn Fontanne
      Lynn Fontanne was a British actress and major stage star in the United States for over 40 years. She teamed with her husband Alfred Lunt.She lived in the United States for more than 60 years but never relinquished her British citizenship. Lunt and Fontanne shared a special Tony Award in 1970...

       – The Visit
      The Visit
      The Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...

    • Kim Stanley
      Kim Stanley
      Kim Stanley was an American actress, primarily in television and theatre, but with occasional film performances....

       – A Touch of the Poet
      A Touch of the Poet
      A Touch of the Poet is a play by Eugene O'Neill.It and its sequel, More Stately Mansions, were intended to be part of a nine-play cycle entitled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed...

    • Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton was an American actress in film, theater and television.-Early life:Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family...

       – The Cold Wind and the Warm


1960s

  • 1960: Anne Bancroft
    Anne Bancroft
    Anne Bancroft was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg....

     – The Miracle Worker
    The Miracle Worker (play)
    The Miracle Worker is a three-act play by William Gibson adapted from his 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name. It is based on Helen Keller's autobiography The Story of My Life.-Plot:...

    as Annie Sullivan
    • Margaret Leighton – Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

    • Claudia McNeil
      Claudia McNeil
      Claudia McNeil was an American actress known for premiering the role of matriarch Lena Younger in both the stage and screen productions of A Raisin in the Sun. She later appeared in a 1981 production of the musical version of the play, Raisin presented by Equity Library Theater...

       – A Raisin in the Sun
      A Raisin in the Sun
      A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes...

    • Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater...

       – Sweet Bird of Youth
      Sweet Bird of Youth
      Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis , whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies...

    • Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton was an American actress in film, theater and television.-Early life:Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family...

       – Toys in the Attic
      Toys in the Attic (play)
      -Plot:Set in New Orleans following the Great Depression, it focuses on the Berniers sisters, two middle-aged spinsters who have sacrificed their own ambitions to look after their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian, whose grandiose dreams repeatedly lead to financial disasters...

    • Irene Worth
      Irene Worth
      Irene Worth, CBE was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the English and American theatre. -Early life:...

       – Toys in the Attic

  • 1961: Joan Plowright
    Joan Plowright
    Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...

    . – A Taste of Honey
    A Taste of Honey
    A Taste of Honey is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 18. It was initially intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalize British theatre and to address social issues that she felt were not being presented...

    as Josephine
    • Tallulah Bankhead
      Tallulah Bankhead
      Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...

       – Midgie Purvis
    • Barbara Baxley
      Barbara Baxley
      Barbara Baxley was an American actress of stage, film and television.-Early life:Baxley was born in Porterville, California, the daughter of Emma and Bert Baxley.-Career:...

       – Period of Adjustment
      Period of Adjustment
      Period of Adjustment is a 1960 play by Tennessee Williams that was adapted for the screen in 1962.Both the stage and film versions are set on Christmas Eve and tell the gentle, light-hearted story of two couples, one newlywed and the other married for five years, both experiencing pains and...

    • Barbara Bel Geddes
      Barbara Bel Geddes
      Barbara Bel Geddes was an American actress, artist and children's author. She is best known for her role in the television drama series Dallas as matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing. Bel Geddes also starred in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the role of Maggie...

       – Mary, Mary
      Mary, Mary (play)
      Mary, Mary is a play by Jean Kerr. The play became one of the longest-running productions of the decade. After two previews, the Broadway production opened on March 8, 1961 at the original Helen Hayes Theatre , where it ran for nearly three years and nine months before transferring to the Morosco...


  • 1962: Margaret Leighton – The Night of the Iguana
    The Night of the Iguana
    The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....

    as Hannah Jelkes
    • Gladys Cooper
      Gladys Cooper
      Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....

       in A Passage to India
      A Passage to India
      A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...

    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – Great Day in the Morning
      Great Day in the Morning
      Great Day In The Morning is a 1956 film. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Stack and Virginia Mayo, set in 1860s Denver.-Plot and overview:...

    • Kim Stanley
      Kim Stanley
      Kim Stanley was an American actress, primarily in television and theatre, but with occasional film performances....

       – A Far Country

  • 1963: Uta Hagen
    Uta Hagen
    Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...

     – Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

    as Martha
    • Hermione Baddeley
      Hermione Baddeley
      Hermione Baddeley was an English character actress of theatre, film and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Room at the Top and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here...

       – The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
      The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
      The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is a play written by Tennessee Williams.It debuted at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962. Its first American production was in January 1963, but it only ran for 69 performances at the Morosco Theatre in New York. Reviews of the play...

    • Margaret Leighton – Tchin-Tchin
      Tchin-Tchin
      Tchin-Tchin is a 1962 play written by Sidney Michaels. It opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, on October 25, 1962 and closed on May 18, 1963 after 222 performances and 3 previews. Directed by Peter Glenville, the play starred Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn, and featured Charles Grodin...

    • Claudia McNeil
      Claudia McNeil
      Claudia McNeil was an American actress known for premiering the role of matriarch Lena Younger in both the stage and screen productions of A Raisin in the Sun. She later appeared in a 1981 production of the musical version of the play, Raisin presented by Equity Library Theater...

       – Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

  • 1964: Sandy Dennis
    Sandy Dennis
    Sandra Dale “Sandy” Dennis was an American theater and film actress. In 1966, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.-Early life:...

     – Any Wednesday
    Any Wednesday
    Any Wednesday is a 1966 comedy film directed by Robert Ellis Miller, starring Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, and Dean Jones. The story centers around a Manhattan woman who is trying to decide between two suitors on the day of her 30th birthday.On August 18, 2009, Warner Brothers released the movie...

    as Ellen Gordon
    • Elizabeth Ashley
      Elizabeth Ashley
      Elizabeth Ashley is an American actress who first came to prominence as the ingenue in the Broadway play Take Her, She's Mine, which earned her a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play.-Early life:...

       – Barefoot in the Park
      Barefoot in the Park
      This article is about the Broadway production. For the film adaptation see Barefoot in the Park .Barefoot in the Park is a romantic comedy by Neil Simon. The original Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, opened October 23, 1963, with the four lead roles taken by actors Elizabeth Ashley ,...

    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
      The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
      The Ballad of the Sad Café is a novel by Carson McCullers.-Plot:The Ballad of the Sad Café opens on the set of a small, isolated Southern town...

    • Julie Harris
      Julie Harris
      Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

       – Marathon '33

  • 1965: Irene Worth
    Irene Worth
    Irene Worth, CBE was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the English and American theatre. -Early life:...

     – Tiny Alice
    Tiny Alice
    Tiny Alice, a three act play written by Edward Albee, premiered on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on December 29, 1964.- Billy Rose Theatre production :...

    as Miss Alice
    • Marjorie Rhodes
      Marjorie Rhodes
      Marjorie Rhodes was a British actress.One of her best-known roles was as Lucy Fitton, the mother of Bill Naughton's northern comedy All in Good Time. She played the role on Broadway, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award in 1965...

       – All in Good Time
    • Beah Richards
      Beah Richards
      Beah Richards was an American actress of stage, screen and television. She was a poet, playwright and author....

       – The Amen Corner
      The Amen Corner
      The Amen Corner is a three-act play by James Baldwin. It was Baldwin's first attempt at theater following Go Tell It on the Mountain. It was first published in 1954, and inspired a short-lived 1983 Broadway musical adaptation with the slightly truncated title, Amen Corner.-Plot introduction:The...

    • Diana Sands
      Diana Sands
      Diana Sands was an American dramatic actress, perhaps most famous for her portrayal of Beneatha Younger, the sister of Sidney Poitier's character in the original film version of Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun...

       – The Owl and the Pussycat
      The Owl and the Pussycat
      "The Owl and the Pussycat" is a nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1871.- Background :Lear wrote the poem for a three-year-old girl, Janet Symonds, the daughter of Lear's friend poet John Addington Symonds and his wife Catherine Symonds...


  • 1966: Rosemary Harris
    Rosemary Harris
    Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

     – The Lion in Winter
    The Lion in Winter
    -Synopsis:Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's château in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173...

    as Eleanor of Aquitaine
    • Sheila Hancock
      Sheila Hancock
      Sheila Cameron Hancock, CBE is an English actress and author.-Early life:Sheila Hancock was born in Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, the daughter of Ivy Louise and Enrico Cameron Hancock, who was a publican. Her sister Billie is seven years older...

       – Entertaining Mr. Sloane
    • Kate Reid
      Kate Reid
      Kate Reid, OC was a Canadian stage, film and television actress.-Life and career:Daphne Kate Reid was born in London, England, the daughter of Canadian parents, Helen Isabel and Walter Clarke Reid, who was a former Bengal Lancer in the Indian army and a retired colonel...

       – Slapstick Tragedy
    • Lee Remick
      Lee Remick
      Lee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...

       – Wait Until Dark
      Wait Until Dark
      Wait Until Dark is a play by Frederick Knott.-Synopsis:Susy Hendrix is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for the heroin hidden in a doll, which her husband Sam innocently transported from Canada as a favor to a woman who has since been murdered...


  • 1967: Beryl Reid
    Beryl Reid
    Beryl Elizabeth Reid, OBE was a British actress of stage and screen.-Early life:Born in Hereford, England in 1919, Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools.-Career:Reid applied for and was accepted in a revue in...

     – The Killing of Sister George
    The Killing of Sister George
    The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.- Stage version :Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...

    as June Buckridge
    • Eileen Atkins
      Eileen Atkins
      Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

       – The Killing of Sister George
      The Killing of Sister George
      The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.- Stage version :Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...

    • Vivien Merchant
      Vivien Merchant
      Vivien Merchant was a British actress.-Career:Merchant performed in many stage productions and several films, including Alfie and Frenzy...

       – The Homecoming
      The Homecoming
      The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...

    • Rosemary Murphy
      Rosemary Murphy
      Rosemary Murphy is an American actress of stage, film, and television.Murphy was born in Munich, Germany, the daughter of American parents Mildred and Robert D. Murphy, a diplomat...

       – A Delicate Balance

  • 1968: Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell, OBE is an Australian-born actress.-Early life:She was born as Ada Caldwell in Melbourne, Australia and was raised in the suburb of Balwyn in Yongala Street. Her father, Edgar, was a plumber and her mother, Zoe, was a taxi dancer. Caldwell's mother, Zoe, had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage...

     – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as Miss Jean Brodie
    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – More Stately Mansions
      More Stately Mansions
      More Stately Mansions is a play by Eugene O'Neill.Originally intended to be part of a nine-play cycle entitled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed, Mansions was an incomplete rough draft written between 1936 and 1939 that O'Neill did not want posthumously finished or produced...

    • Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton
      Maureen Stapleton was an American actress in film, theater and television.-Early life:Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family...

       – Plaza Suite
      Plaza Suite
      Plaza Suite is a comedy play by Neil Simon.-Plot:The play is composed of three acts, each involving different characters but all set in Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel...

    • Dorothy Tutin
      Dorothy Tutin
      Dame Dorothy Tutin DBE was an English actor of stage, film, and television.An obituary in The Daily Telegraph described her as "one of the most enchanting, accomplished and intelligent leading ladies on the post-war British stage...

       – Portrait of a Queen

  • 1969: Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

     – Forty Carats
    Forty Carats
    Forty Carats is a play by Jay Allen.Adapted from the French original by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the comedy revolves around a 40-year-old American divorcee who is assisted by a 22-year-old when her car breaks down during a vacation in Greece...

    as Ann Stanley
    • Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...

       – Seven Descents of Myrtle
    • Charlotte Rae
      Charlotte Rae
      Charlotte Rae is a prolific American character actress of stage, comedienne, singer and dancer, who in her six decades of television is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life...

       – Morning, Noon and Night
      Morning, Noon and Night
      Morning, Noon and Night is a 1995 novel by Sidney Sheldon.- Plot :Harry Stanford is a rich businessman. While travelling on his yacht, he mysteriously falls overboard owing to a storm, leaving his entire fortune, estimated to be around six to seven billion dollars to his three children-Tyler, a...

    • Brenda Vaccaro
      Brenda Vaccaro
      Brenda Buell Vaccaro is an American stage, television and film actress.-Early life:Vaccaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian American parents Christine M. and Mario A. Vaccaro , both of whom were pioneers in Italian cuisine...

       – The Goodbye People
      The Goodbye People
      The Goodbye People is a play by Herb Gardner.The dramedy focuses on elderly Max Silverman, who is determined to reopen the Coney Island boardwalk hot dog stand he closed twenty-two years earlier for renovation, despite the fact he's recovering from a severe heart attack and it's the middle of...



1970s

  • 1970: Tammy Grimes
    Tammy Grimes
    -Early life:Grimes was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eola Willard , a naturalist and spiritualist, and Nicholas Luther Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended high school at the then-all girls school, Beaver Country Day School, in Chestnut Hill,...

     – Private Lives
    Private Lives
    Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

    as Amanda Prynne
    • Geraldine Brooks – Brightower
    • Helen Hayes
      Helen Hayes
      Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...

       – Harvey
      Harvey (play)
      Harvey is a 1944 play by American playwright Mary Chase. Produced by Brock Pemberton and directed by Antoinette Perry, the play premiered on 1 November 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway where it was staged for 1,775 performances before closing on January 15, 1949. The original production...


  • 1971: Maureen Stapleton
    Maureen Stapleton
    Maureen Stapleton was an American actress in film, theater and television.-Early life:Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family...

     – The Gingerbread Lady
    The Gingerbread Lady
    The Gingerbread Lady is a 1970 play by Neil Simon, written specifically for actress Maureen Stapleton, who won both the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for her performance....

    as Evy Meara
    • Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...

       – And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little
      And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little
      And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little is an American play written by Paul Zindel and published by Dramatists Play Service.The story surrounds three sisters: Catherine, an alcoholic; Anna, a hypochondriac and Ceil, an attention-starved socialite.-History:...

    • Diana Rigg
      Diana Rigg
      Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service....

       – Abelard and Heloise
    • Marian Seldes
      Marian Seldes
      Marian Hall Seldes is an American stage, film, radio, and television actress whose career has spanned six decades and who was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Life and career:...

       – Father's Day

  • 1972: Sada Thompson
    Sada Thompson
    Sada Carolyn Thompson was an American stage, film, and television actress.-Life and career:Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1927 to Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss , and raised in New Jersey, Thompson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, after...

     – Twigs
    Twigs (play)
    Twigs is a play by George Furth, with incidental music by Stephen Sondheim.It consists of four vignettes involving three sisters and their mother, each focusing on one of the women as she confronts various issues with the man in her life. Emily is a recent widow, relocating to a new apartment, who...

    as various characters
    • Eileen Atkins
      Eileen Atkins
      Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

       – Vivat! Vivat Regina!
      Vivat! Vivat Regina!
      Vivat! Vivat Regina! is a play written by Robert Bolt. It debuted at Chichester in 1970 and later had a successful run on Broadway in 1972....

    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – All Over
      All Over
      -Production history:The play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre in March 1971 and closed on May 1, 1971 after 40 performances. The director was John Gielgud, and the cast featured Jessica Tandy , Madeline Sherwood and Colleen Dewhurst...

    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – Old Times
      Old Times
      Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall...


  • 1973: Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

     – The Last of Mrs. Lincoln
    The Last of Mrs. Lincoln
    The Last of Mrs. Lincoln is a play by James Prideaux. It depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination....

    as Mary Todd Lincoln
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

       – 6 Rms Riv Vu
      6 Rms Riv Vu
      6 Rms Riv Vu is a play by Bob Randall, who also wrote The Magic Show.6 Rms Riv Vu derives its title from shorthand used by realtors in classified advertising. In this case, a six-room apartment with a view of the Hudson River, located on Manhattan's Riverside Drive, serves as the comedy-drama's...

    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – Mourning Becomes Electra
      Mourning Becomes Electra
      Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...

    • Kathleen Widdoes
      Kathleen Widdoes
      -Life and career:Widdoes was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Bernice and Eugene Widdoes. Widdoes moved to New York City to pursue stage work and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris under a Fulbright scholarship. From 1964 to 1972 she was married to well known actor Richard Jordan, with...

       – Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....


  • 1974: Colleen Dewhurst
    Colleen Dewhurst
    Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

     – A Moon for the Misbegotten
    A Moon for the Misbegotten
    A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night...

    as Josie Hogan
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

      .in Find Your Way Home
    • Julie Harris
      Julie Harris
      Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

       – The Au Pair Man
    • Madeline Kahn
      Madeline Kahn
      Madeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...

       – In the Boom Boom Room
      In the Boom Boom Room
      In the Boom Boom Room is a play by David Rabe. It focuses on a go-go dancer whose difficult relationship with her parents has propelled her into a series of unfortunate affairs with both men and women....

    • Rachel Roberts – The Visit
      The Visit
      The Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...

      and Chemin de Fer

  • 1975: Ellen Burstyn
    Ellen Burstyn
    Ellen Burstyn is a leading American actress of film, stage, and television. Burstyn's career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next ten years she appeared in several films and television series before joining the Actors Studio in 1967...

     – Same Time, Next Year
    Same Time, Next Year
    Same Time, Next Year is 1975 comedy play by Bernard Slade. The plot focuses on two people, married to others, who meet for a romantic tryst once a year for two dozen years.-Plot:...

    as Doris
    • Elizabeth Ashley
      Elizabeth Ashley
      Elizabeth Ashley is an American actress who first came to prominence as the ingenue in the Broadway play Take Her, She's Mine, which earned her a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play.-Early life:...

       – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...

    • Diana Rigg
      Diana Rigg
      Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service....

       – The Misanthrope
      The Misanthrope
      The Misanthrope is the first EP from metal band Darkest Hour. It was released in 1996 on the defunct label Death Truck Records. It is much more hardcore orientated metalcore unlike their later releases.- Track listing :# "Vise" - 5:30...

    • Maggie Smith
      Maggie Smith
      Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

       – Private Lives
      Private Lives
      Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

    • Liv Ullmann
      Liv Ullmann
      Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman...

       – A Doll's House
      A Doll's House
      A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....


  • 1976: Irene Worth
    Irene Worth
    Irene Worth, CBE was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the English and American theatre. -Early life:...

     – Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis , whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies...

    as Princess Kosmonopolis
    • Tovah Feldshuh
      Tovah Feldshuh
      Tovah Feldshuh is an American actress, singer and playwright.-Early life:Terri Sue Feldshuh was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the daughter of Lillian and Sidney Feldshuh, who was a lawyer. She was raised in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent community in Westchester County and graduated...

       – Yentl
      Yentl
      Yentl is a play by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer.Based on Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," it centers on a young girl who defies tradition by discussing and debating Jewish law and theology with her rabbi father...

    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – The Royal Family
    • Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...

       – Mrs. Warren's Profession
      Mrs. Warren's Profession
      Mrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie...


  • 1977: Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

     – The Belle of Amherst
    The Belle of Amherst
    The Belle of Amherst is a one-woman play by William Luce.Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson from 1830-1886, and set in her Amherst, Massachusetts home, the play makes use of her work, diaries, and letters to recollect her encounters with the significant people in her life - family, close...

    as various characters
    • Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Dewhurst
      Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

       – Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
      Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
      Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

    • Liv Ullmann
      Liv Ullmann
      Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman...

       – Anna Christie
      Anna Christie
      Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work.-Plot summary:...

    • Irene Worth
      Irene Worth
      Irene Worth, CBE was an American stage and screen actress who became one of the leading stars of the English and American theatre. -Early life:...

       – The Cherry Orchard
      The Cherry Orchard
      The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...


  • 1978: Jessica Tandy
    Jessica Tandy
    Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...

     – The Gin Game
    The Gin Game
    The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production.-Plot:...

    as Fonsia Dorsey
    • Anne Bancroft
      Anne Bancroft
      Anne Bancroft was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg....

       – Golda
    • Anita Gillette
      Anita Gillette
      Anita Gillette is an American actress, most notable for her work on Broadway and as a celebrity guest on various game shows....

       – Chapter Two
      Chapter Two
      Chapter Two is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The plot focuses on George Schneider, a recently widowed writer who is introduced to soap opera actress Jennie Malone by his press agent brother Leo and her best friend Faye. Jennie's unhappy marriage to a football player has dissolved...

    • Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Parsons
      Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...

       – Miss Margarida's Way
      Miss Margarida's Way
      Miss Margarida's Way is a satirical play written by Brazil's Roberto Athayde.The play is set in what looks like a school classroom. The play's cast typically consists of only two people: Miss Margarida, a school teacher, and a male student...


  • 1979: Constance Cummings
    Constance Cummings
    Constance Cummings, CBE was an American-born British actress, known for her work on both screen and stage.Born Constance Halverstadt in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Dallas Vernon Halverstadt, a lawyer, and his wife, Kate Logan Cummings, a concert soprano. she began as a stage actress,...

     – Wings
    Wings (play)
    Wings is a 1978 play by American playwright Arthur Kopit. Originating as a radio play, it was later adapted for stage and screen.In 1976, Kopit was commissioned to write an original radio play by the NPR drama project Earplay...

    as Emilly Stilson and Carole Shelley
    Carole Shelley
    Carole Shelley is an English actress. Among her many stage roles are the character of Madame Morrible in the original Broadway cast of the musical Wicked.-Life and career:...

     – The Elephant Man
    The Elephant Man (play)
    The Elephant Man is a 1977 play by Bernard Pomerance. The production's Broadway debut in 1979 was produced by Richmond Crinkley and Nelle Nugent, and directed by Jack Hofsiss...

    as Mrs. Kendal
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

       – First Monday in October
      First Monday in October
      First Monday in October is a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The title refers to the day on which the United States Supreme Court traditionally convenes following its summer recess....

    • Frances Sternhagen
      Frances Sternhagen
      Frances Hussey Sternhagen is an American actress. Sternhagen has appeared on and off Broadway, in movies, and on TV since the 1950s.-Personal life:...

       – On Golden Pond


1980s

  • 1980: Phyllis Frelich
    Phyllis Frelich
    Phyllis Frelich is an American actress, and, with Marlee Matlin, one of the two pre-eminent deaf actresses in the United States. Frelich was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota to deaf parents and is the oldest of 9 children...

     – Children of a Lesser God
    Children of a Lesser God (play)
    Children of a Lesser God is a play by Mark Medoff, published in 1980 focusing on the conflicted professional and romantic relationship between deaf former student, Sarah Norman, and her teacher, James Leeds. The play was specially written for the Deaf actress Phyllis Frelich, based to some extent...

    as Sarah Norman
    • Blythe Danner
      Blythe Danner
      Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.-Early life:...

       – Betrayal
      Betrayal (play)
      Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...

    • Maggie Smith
      Maggie Smith
      Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

       – Night and Day
      Night and Day (play)
      Night and Day is a 1978 play by Tom Stoppard. The sets and costumes were designed by Carl Toms and it ran for two years at the Phoenix Theatre in central London, UK. The lead roles of Richard Wagner and Ruth Carson were created by John Thaw and Diana Rigg, respectively.The play is post-colonial in...

    • Anne Twomey
      Anne Twomey
      Anne Twomey is an American theatre, film, and television actress.-Career:Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Twomey earned critical acclaim for her performance in the 1980 play Nuts, for which she won the Theatre World Award and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress...

       – Nuts
      Nuts (play)
      Nuts is a 1979 play by Tom Topor. It is a suspense, psychological, and courtroom drama that explores sexual abuse issues, family and social power dynamics, and aspects of the criminal court system. It was staged off-off-Broadway in 1979 and transferred to Broadway the following year...


  • 1981: Jane Lapotaire
    Jane Lapotaire
    Jane Lapotaire is a British actress.She studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the 1960s. Her role in the title role of Marie Curie first brought her to wide attention...

     – Piaf
    Piaf (play)
    Piaf is a play by Pam Gems that focuses on the life and career of French chanteuse Edith Piaf. The biographical drama with music portrays the singer in a most unflattering light...

    as Edith Piaf
    • Glenda Jackson
      Glenda Jackson
      Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...

       – Rose
      Rose (play)
      Rose is a play by Tomson Highway, which premiered on January 31, 1999, at the University of Toronto.Set on the fictional Wasaychigan Hill reserve on Manitoulin Island, Rose is the third play in Highway's 'Rez Cycle,' following The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing...

    • Eva Le Gallienne
      Eva Le Gallienne
      Eva Le Gallienne was a well-known actress, producer, and director, during the first half of the 20th century.-Early life and early career:...

       – To Grandmother's House We Go
      To Grandmother's House We Go
      To Grandmother's House We Go is a 1992 Christmas television film starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The film's title is one of the first verses of Lydia Maria Child's Thanksgiving song "Over the River and through the Woods"...

    • Elizabeth Taylor
      Elizabeth Taylor
      Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

       – The Little Foxes
      The Little Foxes
      The Little Foxes is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 in the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in...


  • 1982: Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell, OBE is an Australian-born actress.-Early life:She was born as Ada Caldwell in Melbourne, Australia and was raised in the suburb of Balwyn in Yongala Street. Her father, Edgar, was a plumber and her mother, Zoe, was a taxi dancer. Caldwell's mother, Zoe, had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage...

     – Medea
    Medea (play)
    Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...

    as Medea
    • Katharine Hepburn
      Katharine Hepburn
      Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

       – The West Side Waltz
      The West Side Waltz
      The West Side Waltz is a play by Ernest Thompson.The play focuses on Margaret Mary Elderdice, an aging, widowed pianist living in a dreary Upper West Side apartment, and her relationships with a prim, virginal violinist neighbor and the young companion who moves in for an extended stay.Thompson was...

    • Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater...

       – Agnes of God
      Agnes of God
      Agnes of God is a play by John Pielmeier which tells the story of a novice nun who gives birth and insists that the dead child was the result of a virgin conception. A psychiatrist and the mother superior of the convent clash during the resulting investigation...

    • Amanda Plummer – A Taste of Honey
      A Taste of Honey
      A Taste of Honey is the first play by the British dramatist Shelagh Delaney, written when she was 18. It was initially intended as a novel, but she turned it into a play because she hoped to revitalize British theatre and to address social issues that she felt were not being presented...


  • 1983: Jessica Tandy
    Jessica Tandy
    Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...

     – Foxfire
    Foxfire (play)
    Foxfire is a play by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn based on the Foxfire books, about Appalachian culture and traditions in north Georgia. The 1982 Broadway production starred Jessica Tandy, who won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play...

    as Annie Nations
    • Kathy Bates
      Kathy Bates
      Kathleen Doyle "Kathy" Bates is an American actress and director.After several small roles in film and television, Bates rose to prominence with her performance in Misery , for which she won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe...

       – 'Night, Mother
      'night, Mother
      'Night, Mother is a 1983 play by Marsha Norman about a daughter, Jessie, and her mother, Thelma . The play opens with Jessie calmly telling Mama that by morning she will be dead, as she plans to commit suicide that very evening...

    • Kate Nelligan
      Kate Nelligan
      Patricia Colleen "Kate" Nelligan is a Canadian BAFTA award winning stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Nelligan, the fourth of six children, was born in London, Ontario, the daughter of Josephine Alice , a schoolteacher, and Patrick Joseph Nelligan, a factory repairman and municipal...

       – Plenty
      Plenty (play)
      Plenty is a play by David Hare, first performed in 1978, about British post-war disillusion. Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs—she had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executive courier in Nazi-occupied...

    • Anne Pitoniak
      Anne Pitoniak
      Anne Pitoniak was an American actress. She was nominated twice for Broadway's Tony Award: as Best Actress in 1983, for night, Mother, and as Best Actress in 1994, for a revival of William Inge's Picnic.-Early life:Pitoniak was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, the daughter of Sophie and John...

       – 'Night, Mother
      'night, Mother
      'Night, Mother is a 1983 play by Marsha Norman about a daughter, Jessie, and her mother, Thelma . The play opens with Jessie calmly telling Mama that by morning she will be dead, as she plans to commit suicide that very evening...


  • 1984: Glenn Close
    Glenn Close
    Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...

     – The Real Thing
    The Real Thing (play)
    The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....

    as Annie
    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – Heartbreak House
      Heartbreak House
      Heartbreak House is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919 and first played at the Garrick Theatre in 1920. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety...

    • Linda Hunt
      Linda Hunt
      Linda Hunt is an American film, stage and television actress. After making her film debut playing Mrs. Oxheart in Popeye , Hunt portrayed Billy Kwan, her breakthrough performance in The Year of Living Dangerously...

       – End of the World
    • Kate Nelligan
      Kate Nelligan
      Patricia Colleen "Kate" Nelligan is a Canadian BAFTA award winning stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Nelligan, the fourth of six children, was born in London, Ontario, the daughter of Josephine Alice , a schoolteacher, and Patrick Joseph Nelligan, a factory repairman and municipal...

       – A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night...


  • 1985: Stockard Channing
    Stockard Channing
    Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...

     – A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
    A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
    A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is a 1967 play by English playwright Peter Nichols, first staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland before transferring to London's West End theatres in 1968.-Plot summary:Characters* Bri* Grace* Joe* Freddie...

    as Sheila
    • Sinéad Cusack
      Sinéad Cusack
      Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish stage, television and film actress. She has received two Tony Award nominations: once for Best Leading Actress in Much Ado About Nothing , and again for Best Featured Actress in Rock 'n' Roll .-Background:...

       – Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing
      Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

    • Ramona Young - Mama, I Want to Sing!
      Mama, I Want to Sing!
      Mama, I Want to Sing! is an upcoming American musical film written and directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, produced by Vision Films and CodeBlack Entertainment, and distributed by 20th Century Fox's Fox Faith division...

    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – Pack of Lies
      Pack of Lies
      Pack of Lies is a 1983 play by English writer Hugh Whitemore.Based on a true story, the plot centres on Bob and Barbara Jackson and their teenage daughter Julie The Jacksons are friendly with their neighbours, Peter and Helen Kroger, until the couple is...

    • Glenda Jackson
      Glenda Jackson
      Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...

       – Strange Interlude
      Strange Interlude
      Strange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...


  • 1986: Lily Tomlin
    Lily Tomlin
    Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...

     – The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe as various characters
    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – Hay Fever
      Hay Fever
      Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noël Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss. Laura Hope Crews played the role in New York...

    • Mary Beth Hurt
      Mary Beth Hurt
      Mary Beth Hurt is an American actress of stage and screen.-Personal life:Hurt was born Mary Supinger in 1946 in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Delores Lenore and Forrest Clayton Supinger. Her childhood babysitter was actress Jean Seberg, also a Marshalltown native...

       – Benefactors
      Benefactors (play)
      Benefactors is a 1984 play by Michael Frayn. It is set in the 1960s and concerns an idealistic architect David and his wife Jane and their relationship with the cynical Colin and his wife Sheila. David is attempting to build some new homes to replace the slum housing of Basuto Road and is gradually...

    • Jessica Tandy
      Jessica Tandy
      Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...

       – The Petition

  • 1987: Linda Lavin
    Linda Lavin
    Linda Lavin is an American singer and actress. She is best known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her Broadway performances.After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s...

     – Broadway Bound
    Broadway Bound
    Broadway Bound is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. It is the last chapter in his Eugene trilogy, following Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues....

    as Kate
    • Lindsay Duncan
      Lindsay Duncan
      Lindsay Vere Duncan, CBE is a Scottish stage, television and film actress. On stage she won two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for her performance in Les Liaisons dangereuses and Private Lives , and she starred in several plays by Harold Pinter. Her most famous roles on television include:...

       – Les Liaisons Dangereuses
      Les liaisons dangereuses (play)
      Les liaisons dangereuses is a play by Christopher Hampton adapted from the 1782 novel of the same title by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The plot focuses on the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, rivals who use sex as a weapon of humiliation and degradation, all the while enjoying their...

    • Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Page
      Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. Although she starred in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater...

       – Blithe Spirit
      Blithe Spirit (play)
      Blithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...

    • Amanda Plummer – Pygmalion
      Pygmalion (play)
      Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...


  • 1988: Joan Allen
    Joan Allen
    Joan Allen is an American actress. She worked in theatre, television and film during her early career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1989.She has received three Academy Award nominations;...

     – Burn This
    Burn This
    Burn This is a play by Lanford Wilson.-Plot:It begins shortly after the funeral of Robbie, a young gay dancer who drowned in a boating accident. In attendance were his roommates: choreographer Anna and ad man Larry...

    as Anna Mann
    • Blythe Danner
      Blythe Danner
      Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.-Early life:...

       – A Streetcar Named Desire
      A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
      A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

    • Glenda Jackson
      Glenda Jackson
      Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...

       – Macbeth
      Macbeth
      The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

    • Frances McDormand
      Frances McDormand
      Frances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...

       – A Streetcar Named Desire
      A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
      A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...


  • 1989: Pauline Collins
    Pauline Collins
    Pauline Collins, OBE is an English actress of the stage, television, and film. She first came to prominence portraying Sarah Moffat in Upstairs, Downstairs and its spin-off Thomas & Sarah during the 1970s. She later drew acclaim for playing the title role in the play Shirley Valentine for which...

     – Shirley Valentine
    Shirley Valentine
    Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad.-Plot:...

    as Shirley Valentine
    • Joan Allen
      Joan Allen
      Joan Allen is an American actress. She worked in theatre, television and film during her early career, and achieved recognition for her Broadway debut in Burn This, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1989.She has received three Academy Award nominations;...

       – The Heidi Chronicles
      The Heidi Chronicles
      The Heidi Chronicles is a 1988 play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.-Production history:A workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre was held in April 1988, directed by Daniel J. Sullivan....

    • Madeline Kahn
      Madeline Kahn
      Madeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...

       – Born Yesterday
      Born Yesterday
      Born Yesterday is a play written by Garson Kanin which premiered on Broadway in 1946, starring Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. The play was adapted intoa successful 1950 film of the same name.- Plot :...

    • Kate Nelligan
      Kate Nelligan
      Patricia Colleen "Kate" Nelligan is a Canadian BAFTA award winning stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Nelligan, the fourth of six children, was born in London, Ontario, the daughter of Josephine Alice , a schoolteacher, and Patrick Joseph Nelligan, a factory repairman and municipal...

       – Spoils of War
      Spoils of War
      Botín de guerra is a 2000 Argentine documentary film directed and written by David Blaustein with Luis Alberto Asurey. The film premiered on 11 April 2000 in Buenos Aires...



1990s

  • 1990: Maggie Smith
    Maggie Smith
    Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...

     – Lettice and Lovage
    Lettice and Lovage
    Lettice and Lovage is a comedic play by Peter Shaffer, author of Equus and Amadeus. The play was written specifically for Dame Maggie Smith, who originated the title role of Lettice Douffet in both the English and American runs of the production. The role of Lotte Schoen was played by Margaret...

    as Lettice Douffet
    • Geraldine James
      Geraldine James
      Geraldine James, OBE is an English actress.-Early life and family:James was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, to a cardiologist father...

       – The Merchant of Venice
      The Merchant of Venice
      The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

    • Mary-Louise Parker
      Mary-Louise Parker
      Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...

       – Prelude to a Kiss
      Prelude to a Kiss
      Prelude to a Kiss is a 1988 play by Craig Lucas. It tells the story of a couple that falls in love despite the girl's pessimistic outlook on life...

    • Kathleen Turner
      Kathleen Turner
      Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...

       – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
      Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...


  • 1991: Mercedes Ruehl
    Mercedes Ruehl
    Mercedes J. Ruehl is an American theater, television and film actor.-Personal life:Ruehl was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, the daughter of Mercedes J., a school teacher, and Vincent Ruehl, an FBI agent. She was raised Catholic. Her father was of German and Irish descent and her...

     – Lost in Yonkers
    Lost in Yonkers
    Lost in Yonkers is a 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Neil Simon. After eleven previews, the Broadway production, produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed by Gene Saks, opened on February 21, 1991 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it ran for 780 performances...

    as Bella
    • Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...

       – Six Degrees of Separation
    • Julie Harris
      Julie Harris
      Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

       – Lucifer's Child
    • Cherry Jones
      Cherry Jones
      Cherry Jones is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.-Career:...

       – Our Country's Good
      Our Country's Good
      Our Country's Good is a 1988 play written by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, adapted from the Thomas Keneally novel The Playmaker. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales, in the 1780s, who put on a production of The Recruiting...


  • 1992: Glenn Close
    Glenn Close
    Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...

     – Death and the Maiden
    Death and the Maiden (play)
    Death and the Maiden is a 1990 play by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman. The world premiere was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 9 July 1991, directed by Lindsay Posner...

    as Paulina Salas
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

       – The Visit
      The Visit
      The Visit is a 1956 tragicomic play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.-Plot summary:...

    • Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...

       – Four Baboons Adoring the Sun
    • Judith Ivey
      Judith Ivey
      Judith Lee Ivey is an American actress and director.-Personal life:Ivey was born in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Dorothy Lee , a teacher, and Nathan Aldean Ivey, a college instructor and dean. She spent 1965-1968 in Dowagiac, Michigan, where she attended Union High School through tenth grade...

       – Park Your Car in Harvard Yard

  • 1993: Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...

     – The Sisters Rosensweig
    The Sisters Rosensweig
    The Sisters Rosensweig is a play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play focuses on three Jewish- American sisters and their lives. It "broke theatrical ground by concentrating on a non-traditional cast of three middle-aged women." Wasserstein received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in...

    as Dr. Gorgeous Teitelebaum
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

       – The Sisters Rosensweig
      The Sisters Rosensweig
      The Sisters Rosensweig is a play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play focuses on three Jewish- American sisters and their lives. It "broke theatrical ground by concentrating on a non-traditional cast of three middle-aged women." Wasserstein received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in...

    • Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...

       – Shakespeare For My Father
      Shakespeare For My Father
      Shakespeare for My Father is a one-woman play written and performed by Lynn Redgrave. The play concerns Redgrave's relationship with her father, the imposing actor and family patriarch Sir Michael Redgrave....

    • Natasha Richardson
      Natasha Richardson
      Natasha Jane Richardson was an English actress of stage and screen. A member of the Redgrave family, she was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...

       – Anna Christie
      Anna Christie
      Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work.-Plot summary:...


  • 1994: Diana Rigg
    Diana Rigg
    Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service....

     – Medea
    Medea (play)
    Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...

    as Medea
    • Nancy Marchand
      Nancy Marchand
      Nancy Marchand was an American actress, whose career encompassed both stage and screen. She appeared in various theatre productions throughout the early 1950s, before being offered roles on film and television....

       – Black Comedy
      Black Comedy
      Black Comedy is a one-act farce by Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1965.The play is written to be staged under a reversed lighting scheme: the play opens on a darkened stage...

    • Joan Rivers
      Joan Rivers
      Joan Rivers is an American comedian, television personality and actress. She is known for her brash manner; her loud, raspy voice with a heavy New York accent; and her numerous cosmetic surgeries...

       – Sally Marr and Her Escorts
    • Anna Deavere Smith
      Anna Deavere Smith
      Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is currently the artist in residence at the Center for American Progress.-Early life:...

       – Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992

  • 1995: Cherry Jones
    Cherry Jones
    Cherry Jones is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.-Career:...

     – The Heiress
    The Heiress (play)
    The Heiress is a 1947 play by American playwrights Ruth and Augustus Goetz adapted from the 1880 Henry James novel, Washington Square. The play opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on 29 September 1947 directed by Jed Harris starring Wendy Hiller, Basil Rathbone, and Peter Cookson...

    as Catherine Sloper
    • Mary Alice
      Mary Alice
      Mary Alice is an American actress.Alice was born Mary Alice Smith in Indianola, Mississippi, the daughter of Ozelar and Sam Smith. In 1987 she received a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her work in Fences...

       – Having Our Say
    • Eileen Atkins
      Eileen Atkins
      Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

       – Indiscretions
    • Helen Mirren
      Helen Mirren
      Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

       – A Month in the Country
      A Month in the Country (play)
      A Month in the Country is a comedy in five acts by Ivan Turgenev. It was written in France between 1848 and 1850 and was first published in 1855...


  • 1996: Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell
    Zoe Caldwell, OBE is an Australian-born actress.-Early life:She was born as Ada Caldwell in Melbourne, Australia and was raised in the suburb of Balwyn in Yongala Street. Her father, Edgar, was a plumber and her mother, Zoe, was a taxi dancer. Caldwell's mother, Zoe, had a Peugeot of 1950 vintage...

     – Master Class
    Master Class
    Master Class is a play by Terrence McNally, with incidental music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini.The play originally was staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Mark Taper Forum. After twelve previews, the Broadway production, directed by Leonard Foglia, opened...

    as Maria Callas
    • Carol Burnett
      Carol Burnett
      Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...

       – Moon Over Buffalo
      Moon Over Buffalo
      Moon Over Buffalo is a 1995 comic play by Ken Ludwig set in Buffalo, New York in 1953. This play marked the return of Carol Burnett to the Broadway stage, after 30 years.- Characters :*George Hay, a traveling actor....

    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – A Delicate Balance
    • Elaine Stritch
      Elaine Stritch
      Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...

       – A Delicate Balance

  • 1997: Janet McTeer
    Janet McTeer
    Janet McTeer, OBE is a British actress.-Life and career:McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Jean and Alan McTeer...

     – A Doll's House
    A Doll's House
    A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

    as Nora Helmer
    • Julie Harris
      Julie Harris
      Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...

       – The Gin Game
      The Gin Game
      The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production.-Plot:...

    • Shirley Knight
      Shirley Knight
      Shirley Enola Knight is an American stage, film and television actress. She has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, in 1960 for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and in 1962 for Sweet Bird of Youth....

       – The Young Man From Atlanta
      The Young Man From Atlanta
      The Young Man From Atlanta is a drama written by American dramatist, Horton Foote first produced Off Broadway by the Signature Theatre on 27 January 1995. Foote received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work...

    • Lia Williams
      Lia Williams
      Lia Williams is an English actress and film director, notable for many stage, film, and television appearances. She is possibly best known for her role in the motion picture, Dirty Weekend...

       – Skylight
      Skylight (play)
      Skylight is a play by British dramatist David Hare. It opened at the Royal National Theatre, Cottesloe, directed by Richard Eyre, in 1995. The production then moved to the Wyndham's Theatre for a short run from 13 February 1996, after winning the Laurence Olivier Award for the 1995...


  • 1998: Marie Mullen
    Marie Mullen
    Marie Mullen is an Irish actress.She was one of the founding members of the Druid Theatre Company and her husband has been associated with the company many times in the past...

     – The Beauty Queen of Leenane
    The Beauty Queen of Leenane
    The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a 1996 black comedy by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh which was premiered by the Druid Theatre Company in Galway, Ireland...

    as Maureen Folan
    • Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander
      Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...

       – Honour
      Honour (play)
      Honour is a 1995 play by the Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith.It tells the familiar tale of a middle aged man, George, who leaves his wife, Honour, and their 24-year-old daughter, Sophie, for a relationship with a much younger woman by the name of Claudia.It was first performed in...

    • Allison Janney
      Allison Janney
      Allison Brooks Janney is an American actress, best known for her role as C.J. Cregg on the television series The West Wing.- Personal life :...

       – A View From the Bridge
      A View from the Bridge
      A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...

    • Geraldine McEwan
      Geraldine McEwan
      Geraldine McEwan is an English actor with a diverse history in theatre, film, and television. From 2004 to 2009 she appeared as Miss Marple, the Agatha Christie sleuth, for the series Marple.-Background:...

       – The Chairs

  • 1999: Judi Dench
    Judi Dench
    Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA 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...

     – Amy's View
    Amy's View
    Amy's View was written by British playwright David Hare, and originally premiered in London at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre on June 13, 1997. It was directed by Richard Eyre and starred Judi Dench, Ronald Pickup and Samantha Bond in the title role. It was then performed on...

    as Esmé Allen
    • Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing
      Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...

       – The Lion in Winter
      The Lion in Winter
      -Synopsis:Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's château in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173...

    • Marian Seldes
      Marian Seldes
      Marian Hall Seldes is an American stage, film, radio, and television actress whose career has spanned six decades and who was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.-Life and career:...

       – Ring Round the Moon
      Ring Round the Moon
      Ring Round the Moon is a 1950 adaptation by the English dramatist Christopher Fry of Jean Anouilh's Invitation to the Castle . Peter Brook commissioned Fry to adapt the play and the first production of Ring Round the Moon was given at the Globe Theatre...

    • Zoë Wanamaker
      Zoe Wanamaker
      Zoë Wanamaker, CBE is an American-British actress. She has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company; in films, including the Harry Potter series; and in a number of television productions, including a long-time role as Susan Harper in the sitcom My Family.-Early life and family:Wanamaker was...

       – Electra
      Electra (Sophocles)
      Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan...



2000s

  • 2000: Jennifer Ehle
    Jennifer Ehle
    Jennifer Ehle is an American actress of stage and screen. She is known for her BAFTA winning role as Elizabeth Bennet in the 1995 mini-series Pride and Prejudice.-Early life:...

     – The Real Thing
    The Real Thing (play)
    The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....

    as Annie
    • Jayne Atkinson
      Jayne Atkinson
      Jayne Atkinson is an English-born American film, theatre and television actress. She is perhaps best known for the role of Karen Hayes on 24 as well as her Tony Award-nominated roles in The Rainmaker and Enchanted April...

       – The Rainmaker
      The Rainmaker (play)
      The Rainmaker is a play written by N. Richard Nash in the early 1950s. The play opened on October 28, 1954 at the Cort Theatre in New York and ran for 125 performances. It was directed by Joseph Anthony and produced by Ethel Linder Reiner....

      as Lizzie Curry
    • Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Harris
      Rosemary Ann Harris is an English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout her career she has been nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and has won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Tony Award, an Obie, and five Drama Desk Awards.-Early life:Harris was born in...

       – Waiting in the Wings
      Waiting in the Wings (play)
      Waiting in the Wings is a play by Noël Coward. Set in a retirement home for actresses, it focuses on a feud between residents Lotta Bainbridge and May Davenport, who once both loved the same man.-Background:...

      as May Davenport
    • Cherry Jones
      Cherry Jones
      Cherry Jones is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.-Career:...

       – A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night...

      as Josie Hogan
    • Claudia Shear
      Claudia Shear
      Claudia Shear is an American actress and playwright.The Brooklyn-born Shear first came to prominence with her 1994 self-penned solo performance piece Blown Sideways Through Life, which enjoyed a run of 221 performances at the off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theatre and won her an Obie Award and a Drama...

       – Dirty Blonde
      Dirty Blonde (play)
      Dirty Blonde is a play by Claudia Shear.Conceived by Shear and James Lapine and featuring songs from I'm No Angel and She Done Him Wrong, it explores the phenomenon of the legendary Mae West, one of America's most enduring and controversial pop culture icons...

      as Mae West

  • 2001: Mary-Louise Parker
    Mary-Louise Parker
    Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...

     – Proof
    Proof (play)
    Proof is a play by David Auburn originally produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club on 23 May 2000. It then went to Broadway on 24 October 2000 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and was directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, with Mary-Louise Parker as Catherine, Larry Bryggman as Robert, Ben Shenkman as Hal, and...

    as Catherine
    • Juliette Binoche
      Juliette Binoche
      Juliette Binoche is a French actress, artist and dancer. She has appeared in more than 40 feature films, been recipient of numerous international accolades, is a published author and has appeared on stage across the world. Coming from an artistic background, she began taking acting lessons during...

       – Betrayal
      Betrayal (play)
      Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...

      as Emma
    • Linda Lavin
      Linda Lavin
      Linda Lavin is an American singer and actress. She is best known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her Broadway performances.After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s...

       – The Tale of the Allergist's Wife
      The Tale of the Allergist's Wife
      The Tale of the Allergist's Wife is a play by Charles Busch.In his first play written for a mainstream audience, Busch explores the Upper West Side milieu of aspiring intellectual and middle-aged upper class matron Marjorie Taub, who lives comfortably with her doctor husband Ira in an expensively...

      as Marjorie Taub
    • Jean Smart
      Jean Smart
      Jean E. Smart is an American film, television, and stage actress. She is known for her comedic roles, one of the best known being her role as Charlene Frazier Stillfield on the CBS sitcom Designing Women. She later gained critical acclaim for dramatic work, with her portrayal of Martha Logan on 24...

       – The Man Who Came to Dinner
      The Man Who Came to Dinner
      The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...

      as Lorraine Sheldon
    • Leslie Uggams
      Leslie Uggams
      Leslie Uggams is an American actress and singer, perhaps best known for her work in Hallelujah, Baby! She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.-Singing:...

       – King Hedley II
      King Hedley II
      King Hedley II is a play by American playwright August Wilson, the ninth in his ten-part series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. This is the ninth of the plays in Wilson's ten-play cycle, each from a different era...

      as Ruby

  • 2002: Lindsay Duncan
    Lindsay Duncan
    Lindsay Vere Duncan, CBE is a Scottish stage, television and film actress. On stage she won two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for her performance in Les Liaisons dangereuses and Private Lives , and she starred in several plays by Harold Pinter. Her most famous roles on television include:...

     – Private Lives
    Private Lives
    Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

    as Amanda Prynne
    • Kate Burton
      Kate Burton (actress)
      -Personal life:Burton was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the daughter of producer Sybil Burton and actor Richard Burton . She was thus the stepdaughter of actress Elizabeth Taylor and of Sybil's second husband Jordan Christopher. In 1979, Burton earned a bachelor's degree in Russian studies and...

       – Hedda Gabler
      Hedda Gabler
      Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

      as Hedda Gabler
    • Laura Linney
      Laura Linney
      Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

       – The Crucible
      The Crucible
      The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...

      as Elizabeth Proctor
    • Helen Mirren
      Helen Mirren
      Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

       – Dance of Death as Alice
    • Mercedes Ruehl
      Mercedes Ruehl
      Mercedes J. Ruehl is an American theater, television and film actor.-Personal life:Ruehl was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, the daughter of Mercedes J., a school teacher, and Vincent Ruehl, an FBI agent. She was raised Catholic. Her father was of German and Irish descent and her...

       – The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? as Stevie

  • 2003: Vanessa Redgrave
    Vanessa Redgrave
    Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

     – Long Day's Journey into Night
    Long Day's Journey Into Night
    Long Day's Journey Into Night is a 1956 drama in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play is widely considered to be his masterwork...

    as Mary Cavon Tyrone
    • Jayne Atkinson
      Jayne Atkinson
      Jayne Atkinson is an English-born American film, theatre and television actress. She is perhaps best known for the role of Karen Hayes on 24 as well as her Tony Award-nominated roles in The Rainmaker and Enchanted April...

       – Enchanted April
      Enchanted April
      Enchanted April is the second film adaptation Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel, The Enchanted April. The novel was adapted as a Broadway play in 1925, and as an RKO Radio film in 1935 - both using the same title as the novel. The 1992 film release received several Golden Globe and Academy Award...

      as Lotty Wilton
    • Victoria Hamilton
      Victoria Hamilton
      Victoria Sharp is an English actress who performs under the stage name Victoria Hamilton.-Early life:Hamilton was born on 5 April 1971 in Wimbledon, London, England, and grew up in Godalming, Surrey. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.-Career:Hamilton is best known for her...

       – A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
      A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
      A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is a 1967 play by English playwright Peter Nichols, first staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland before transferring to London's West End theatres in 1968.-Plot summary:Characters* Bri* Grace* Joe* Freddie...

      as Sheila
    • Clare Higgins – Vincent in Brixton
      Vincent in Brixton
      Vincent in Brixton is a 2003 play by Nicholas Wright. The play premiered at London's National Theatre. It transferred to the Playhouse Theatre and later to Broadway....

      as Ursula Loyer
    • Fiona Shaw
      Fiona Shaw
      Fiona Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre director. Although to international audiences she is probably most familiar for her minor role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films, she is an accomplished classical actress...

       – Medea
      Medea (play)
      Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...

      as Medea

  • 2004: Phylicia Rashad
    Phylicia Rashad
    Phylicia Rashād is an American Tony Award winning actress and singer, best known for her role as Clair Huxtable on the long-running NBC sitcom The Cosby Show....

     – A Raisin in the Sun
    A Raisin in the Sun
    A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes...

    as Lena Younger
    • Eileen Atkins
      Eileen Atkins
      Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

       – The Retreat from Moscow
      The Retreat from Moscow
      The Retreat from Moscow is a play written by William Nicholson.The play is about the end of a three-decade marriage and the subsequent emotional fallout. The title is taken from Napoleon's costly invasion of Moscow and the subsequent retreat. It was first performed at the Chichester Festival...

      as Alice
    • Tovah Feldshuh
      Tovah Feldshuh
      Tovah Feldshuh is an American actress, singer and playwright.-Early life:Terri Sue Feldshuh was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the daughter of Lillian and Sidney Feldshuh, who was a lawyer. She was raised in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent community in Westchester County and graduated...

       – Golda's Balcony
      Golda's Balcony
      Golda's Balcony is a play by William Gibson.It follows the trajectory of the life of Golda Meir from Russian immigrant to American schoolteacher to a leader of international politics as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. Much of its focus is on the period surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when...

      as Golda Meir
    • Anne Heche
      Anne Heche
      Anne Celeste Heche is an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She started her career on the daytime soap opera Another World, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Heche gradually landed supporting roles in feature films, and in 1997 appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer,...

       – Twentieth Century
      Twentieth Century (play)
      Twentieth Century is a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the unproduced play Napoleon of Broadway by Charles B. Millholland, inspired by his experience working for the eccentric Broadway impresario David Belasco....

      as Lily Garland
    • Swoosie Kurtz
      Swoosie Kurtz
      Swoosie Kurtz is an American actress. She began her career in theater during the 1970s and shortly thereafter began a career in television, garnering ten nominations and winning one Emmy Award. Her most famous television project was her role on the 1990s NBC drama Sisters...

       – Frozen
      Frozen (play)
      Frozen is a play by Bryony Lavery that tells the story of the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl, Rhona. The play follows Rhona's mother and killer over the years that follow. They are linked by a doctor who is studying what causes men to commit such crimes...

      as Nancy

  • 2005: Cherry Jones
    Cherry Jones
    Cherry Jones is an American actress and recipient of the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Drama Series and the 2005 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.-Career:...

     – Doubt
    Doubt (play)
    Doubt: A Parable is a 2004 play by John Patrick Shanley. Originally staged off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club on November 23, 2004, the production transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in March 2005 and closed on July 2, 2006 after 525 performances and 25 previews...

    as Sister Aloysius Bouvier
    • Laura Linney
      Laura Linney
      Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

       – Sight Unseen
      Sight Unseen (play)
      Sight Unseen is a play by Donald Margulies. At its center is Jonathan Waxman, a Brooklyn Jew who has become a very wealthy critically acclaimed artist. Happily married, with a baby on the way, he travels to London for a retrospective of his work...

      as Patricia
    • Mary-Louise Parker
      Mary-Louise Parker
      Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...

       – Reckless as Rachel
    • Phylicia Rashad
      Phylicia Rashad
      Phylicia Rashād is an American Tony Award winning actress and singer, best known for her role as Clair Huxtable on the long-running NBC sitcom The Cosby Show....

       – Gem of the Ocean
      Gem of the Ocean
      Gem of the Ocean is a play by American playwright August Wilson. It is the first installment of his decade-by-decade, ten-play chronicle, The Pittsburgh Cycle, dramatizing the African-American experience in the twentieth century.-Plot :...

      as Aunt Ester
    • Kathleen Turner
      Kathleen Turner
      Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...

       – Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
      Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
      Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

      as Martha

  • 2006: Cynthia Nixon
    Cynthia Nixon
    Cynthia Ellen Nixon is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City . She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a Grammy Award....

     – Rabbit Hole
    Rabbit Hole
    Rabbit Hole is a play written by David Lindsay-Abaire. It was the recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play was originally commissioned by South Coast Repertory and first presented at its Pacific Playwrights Festival reading series in 2005...

    as Becca Corbett
    • Kate Burton
      Kate Burton (actress)
      -Personal life:Burton was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the daughter of producer Sybil Burton and actor Richard Burton . She was thus the stepdaughter of actress Elizabeth Taylor and of Sybil's second husband Jordan Christopher. In 1979, Burton earned a bachelor's degree in Russian studies and...

       – The Constant Wife
      The Constant Wife
      The Constant Wife, a comedy of manners, was written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1926 and later published for general sales in April 1927.- Plot :...

      as Constance Middleton
    • Judy Kaye
      Judy Kaye
      Judy Kaye is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime and Mamma Mia!-Biography:...

       – Souvenir
      Souvenir (play)
      Souvenir is a two-character play, with incidental music, by Stephen Temperley.Set in a Greenwich Village supper club in 1964, it flashes back to the musical career of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy socialite with a famously uncertain sense of pitch and key. In 1932, she met mediocre pianist...

      as Florence Foster Jenkins
    • Lisa Kron
      Lisa Kron
      Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright.-Biography:Kron was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She jokes in one of her plays that her life began on her parents’ trip to Europe: “I was conceived in Venice, you know...

       – Well
      Well (play)
      Well is a play about illness written by and starring Lisa Kron. Well made its world premier at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York City in 2004. The play was directed by Leigh Silverman and also starred Jayne Houdyshell as Lisa's mother, Ann Kron. The Public Theater production garnered...

      as Lisa Kron
    • Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Redgrave
      Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE was an English actress.A member of the well-known British family of actors, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962...

       – The Constant Wife
      The Constant Wife
      The Constant Wife, a comedy of manners, was written by W. Somerset Maugham in 1926 and later published for general sales in April 1927.- Plot :...

      as Mrs. Culver

  • 2007: Julie White
    Julie White
    Julie White is an American actress. She is known for her role in Grace Under Fire and for her role as Judy Witwicky in the Transformers film series.-Personal life:...

     – The Little Dog Laughed
    The Little Dog Laughed (play)
    The Little Dog Laughed is a play by Douglas Carter Beane.The four characters are an actor, Mitchell, his acerbic agent Diane, a hustler named Alex, and Alex's girlfriend Ellen...

    as Diane
    • Eve Best
      Eve Best
      Eve Best is an English actress, best known for her roles as Dr. O'Hara in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie, as Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech, and Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special about that First Lady.-Early life and education:Best...

       – A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten
      A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O'Neill. The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night...

      as Josie Hogan
    • Swoosie Kurtz
      Swoosie Kurtz
      Swoosie Kurtz is an American actress. She began her career in theater during the 1970s and shortly thereafter began a career in television, garnering ten nominations and winning one Emmy Award. Her most famous television project was her role on the 1990s NBC drama Sisters...

       – Heartbreak House
      Heartbreak House
      Heartbreak House is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919 and first played at the Garrick Theatre in 1920. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety...

      as Hesione Hushabye
    • Angela Lansbury
      Angela Lansbury
      Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...

       – Deuce
      Deuce (play)
      Deuce is a play by Terrence McNally. The Broadway production, directed by Michael Blakemore, starred Angela Lansbury as blue collar Leona Mullen and Marian Seldes as well-bred Midge Barker, two former successful tennis partners, now retired, who reunite to be honored at a women's quarterfinals...

      as Leona Mullen
    • Vanessa Redgrave
      Vanessa Redgrave
      Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

       – The Year of Magical Thinking
      The Year of Magical Thinking
      The Year of Magical Thinking , by Joan Didion , is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne . Published by Knopf in October 2005, the book was immediately acclaimed as a classic in the genre of mourning literature...

      as Joan Didion

  • 2008: Deanna Dunagan
    Deanna Dunagan
    Deanna Dunagan is a Chicago based American actress. Although Dunagan has appeared on television and in films, she is most admired for her work as a stage actress. She is best known for her Tony Award-winning portrayal of Violet Weston in Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.-Early life and...

     – August: Osage County
    August: Osage County
    August: Osage County is a darkly comedic play by Tracy Letts. It was the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on 28 June 2007, and closed on 26 August 2007. Its Broadway debut was at the Imperial Theater on 4 December 2007 and...

    as Violet Weston
    • Eve Best
      Eve Best
      Eve Best is an English actress, best known for her roles as Dr. O'Hara in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie, as Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech, and Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special about that First Lady.-Early life and education:Best...

       – The Homecoming
      The Homecoming
      The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival...

      as Ruth
    • Kate Fleetwood
      Kate Fleetwood
      Kate Fleetwood is an English actress. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Chichester Festival Theatre's Macbeth which transferred to the West End and Broadway....

       – Macbeth
      Macbeth
      The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

      as Lady Macbeth
    • S. Epatha Merkerson
      S. Epatha Merkerson
      S. Epatha Merkerson is an American film, stage, and television actress. She has won a Golden Globe, Emmy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Obie Award and four NAACP Image Awards. She has also received two Tony Award nominations...

       – Come Back, Little Sheba
      Come Back, Little Sheba (play)
      Come Back, Little Sheba is a 1950 play by the American dramatist William Inge. The play was Inge's first, written while he was a teacher at Washington University in St...

      as Lola
    • Amy Morton
      Amy Morton
      Amy Morton is an American actress best known for her work in theatre. A member of Steppenwolf Theater's core group of actors since 1997, Morton has spent most of her career working in the Chicago theater scene. She made her Broadway debut starring opposite Gary Sinise as Nurse Ratched in the Tony...

       – August: Osage County
      August: Osage County
      August: Osage County is a darkly comedic play by Tracy Letts. It was the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on 28 June 2007, and closed on 26 August 2007. Its Broadway debut was at the Imperial Theater on 4 December 2007 and...

      as Barbara Fordham

  • 2009: Marcia Gay Harden
    Marcia Gay Harden
    Marcia Gay Harden is an American film and theatre actress. Harden's breakthrough role was in Miller's Crossing and then The First Wives Club which was followed by several roles which gained her wider fame including the hit comedy Flubber and Meet Joe Black...

     – God of Carnage
    God of Carnage
    God of Carnage is a play by Yasmina Reza. It is about two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, who meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving...

    as Veronica Vallon
    • Hope Davis
      Hope Davis
      Hope Davis is an American actress. She has starred in more than 20 feature films, including About Schmidt, Arlington Road, Flatliners, Mumford, American Splendor, The Lodger and Next Stop Wonderland....

       – God of Carnage
      God of Carnage
      God of Carnage is a play by Yasmina Reza. It is about two pairs of parents, one of whose child has hurt the other at a public park, who meet to discuss the matter in a civilized manner. However, as the evening goes on, the parents become increasingly childish, resulting in the evening devolving...

      as Annette Reille
    • Jane Fonda
      Jane Fonda
      Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...

       – 33 Variations
      33 Variations
      33 Variations is a play by Moisés Kaufman, inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven's eponymous work. It débuted on Broadway on March 9, 2009, starring Jane Fonda...

      as Katherine Brandt
    • Janet McTeer
      Janet McTeer
      Janet McTeer, OBE is a British actress.-Life and career:McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Jean and Alan McTeer...

       – Mary Stuart as Mary, Queen of Scots
    • Harriet Walter
      Harriet Walter
      Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...

       – Mary Stuart as Elizabeth of England


2010s

  • 2010: Viola Davis
    Viola Davis
    Viola Davis is an American actress.Known primarily as a stage actress, Davis won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for her role in King Hedley II . She won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role in the...

     – Fences as Rose Maxson
    • Valerie Harper
      Valerie Harper
      Valerie Harper is an American actress, known for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on the 1970s television show The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and for her starring roles on the sitcoms Rhoda and Valerie.-Early life and career:Harper was born at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern, Rockland County,...

       – Looped
      Looped
      Looped is a play by Matthew Lombardo that had its Broadway run in 2010, after two previous productions in 2008 and 2009, all of them featuring Valerie Harper.-Productions:...

      as Tallulah Bankhead
    • Linda Lavin
      Linda Lavin
      Linda Lavin is an American singer and actress. She is best known for playing the title character in the sitcom Alice and for her Broadway performances.After acting as a child, Lavin joined the Compass Players in the late 1950s...

       – Collected Stories
      Collected Stories (play)
      Collected Stories is a play by Donald Margulies which premiered at South Coast Repertory in 1996.It premiered on Broadway in a limited engagement production by the Manhattan Theatre Club with previews having started April 9, 2010, opening April 28, 2010, through June 2010...

      as Ruth Steiner
    • Laura Linney
      Laura Linney
      Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

       – Time Stands Still
      Time Stands Still (play)
      Time Stands Still is a play written by the Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies and directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan about changing relationships and developing social issues...

      as Sarah
    • Jan Maxwell
      Jan Maxwell
      Jan Maxwell is an American stage and television actress. She is a four-time Tony Award nominee.-Biography:She is the daughter of former First District Judge Ralph B. Maxwell and Elizabeth Maxwell, a lawyer for the EPA. She attended West Fargo High School, West Fargo, North Dakota and Moorhead...

       – The Royal Family as Julie Cavendish

  • 2011: Frances McDormand
    Frances McDormand
    Frances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...

     in Good People
    Good People (play)
    Good People is a 2011 play by David Lindsay-Abaire. The world premiere was staged by the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City. The production was nominated for two 2011 Tony Awards – Best Play and Best Leading Actress in a Play , with the latter winning.- Synopsis :Margie Walsh, a resident of...

    as Margie Walsh
    • Nina Arianda
      Nina Arianda
      Nina Arianda is an American theatre and film actress.-Early life and education:Arianda grew up in Clifton, New Jersey and Heidelberg, Germany...

       – Born Yesterday
      Born Yesterday
      Born Yesterday is a play written by Garson Kanin which premiered on Broadway in 1946, starring Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn. The play was adapted intoa successful 1950 film of the same name.- Plot :...

      as Billie Dawn
    • Lily Rabe
      Lily Rabe
      Lily Rabe is an American actress. She is the daughter of the late actress Jill Clayburgh and playwright David Rabe and attended Northwestern University and the Hotchkiss School....

       – The Merchant of Venice
      The Merchant of Venice
      The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

      as Portia
    • Vanessa Redgrave
      Vanessa Redgrave
      Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

       – Driving Miss Daisy
      Driving Miss Daisy (play)
      Driving Miss Daisy is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, from 1948 to 1973...

      as Daisy Werthan
    • Hannah Yelland
      Hannah Yelland
      Hannah Yelland is the stage name of Hannah Bahar , a British actress now living and working in the United States. She was brought up near Hampton Court and is the daughter of British actor David Yelland, with whom she appeared onstage in a 2007/08 revival of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas...

       – Brief Encounter
      Brief Encounter
      Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...

      as Laura

Multiple winners

5 Wins
  • Julie Harris

3 Wins
  • Helen Hayes
  • Zoe Caldwell
  • Jessica Tandy

2 Wins
  • Shirley Booth
  • Glenn Close
  • Uta Hagen
  • Cherry Jones
  • Margaret Leighton


Multiple Nominees

9 Nominations
  • Julie Harris


8 Nominations
  • Rosemary Harris


7 Nominations
  • Colleen Dewhurst


6 Nominations
  • Jane Alexander


4 Nominations
  • Eileen Atkins
  • Stockard Channing
  • Cherry Jones
  • Margaret Leighton
  • Maureen Stapleton
  • Jessica Tandy
  • Irene Worth


3 Nominations
  • Zoe Caldwell
  • Helen Hayes
  • Glenda Jackson
  • Madeline Kahn
  • Linda Lavin
  • Laura Linney
  • Kate Nelligan
  • Geraldine Page
  • Mary-Louise Parker
  • Estelle Parsons
  • Lynn Redgrave
  • Vanessa Redgrave
  • Diana Rigg
  • Maggie Smith

2 Nominations
  • Joan Allen
  • Elizabeth Ashley
  • Jayne Atkinson
  • Anne Bancroft
  • Barbara Bel Geddes
  • Eve Best
  • Shirley Booth
  • Kate Burton
  • Glenn Close
  • Blythe Danner
  • Lindsay Duncan
  • Tovah Feldshuh
  • Uta Hagen
  • Swoosie Kurtz
  • Frances McDormand
  • Siobhán McKenna
  • Claudia McNeil
  • Janet McTeer
  • Helen Mirren
  • Amanda Plummer
  • Phylicia Rashad
  • Ramona Cole
  • Mercedes Ruehl
  • Marian Seldes
  • Kim Stanley
  • Kathleen Turner
  • Liv Ullmann


Statistics

  • There have been 2 ties in this category.
  • Only three roles have garned multiple Lead Actress Tony Awards for their performers.
  • Jessica Tandy is the oldest winner in this category. She was 74 when she won for Foxfire in 1983. The youngest winner is Audrey Hepburn who won at age 25.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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