Patti LuPone

Early life and education

LuPone was born on April 21, 1949 in Northport, New York, on Long Island, the daughter of Italian-American parents Angela Louise (née Patti), a library administrator at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University and Orlando Joseph LuPone, a school administrator and English teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington, NY. Her great-great aunt was 19th-century Spanish-born Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Her father's side came from Abruzzo, while her mother's side is Sicilian. Lucille Ball was a family friend, having attended grade school with LuPone's mother. Her older brother Robert LuPone was a Tony-nominated actor, dancer, and director who originated the role of Zach, the director, in A Chorus Line. She grew up Catholic. LuPone is a dual citizen of Italy and the United States.

LuPone was part of the first graduating class of Juilliard's Drama Division (1968–1972: Group 1), which also included actors Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. She graduated from Juilliard in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. According to LuPone, her rigorous Juilliard training has instilled in her "a respect for the craft of acting and the stage" but said it did little to prepare her for the realities of pursuing a career on Broadway. LuPone has a mezzo-soprano vocal range, and she is known for her strong/high "Broadway" belt singing voice. In a 2008 interview, she maintained that she was "an actor who sings" and thankful she "had a voice".

Career

1970–1979: Early roles and breakthrough

In 1972, LuPone became one of the original members of The Acting Company, formed by John Houseman. The Acting Company is a nationally touring repertory theater company. LuPone's stint with the company lasted from 1972 to 1976 and she appeared in many of their productions, such as The Cradle Will Rock, The School for Scandal, Women Beware Women, The Beggar's Opera, The Time of Your Life, The Lower Depths, The Hostage, Next Time I'll Sing to You, Measure for Measure, Scapin, Edward II, The Orchestra, Love's Labours Lost, Arms and the Man and The Way of the World. She made her Broadway debut in the play The Three Sisters as Irina in 1973. For her work in The Robber Bridegroom (1975) she received her first Tony Award nomination, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. The Acting Company honored LuPone on March 12, 2012 in an event called "Patti's Turn" at the Kaye Playhouse.

In 1976, theater producer David Merrick hired LuPone as a replacement to play Genevieve, the title role of the troubled pre-Broadway production of The Baker's Wife. The production toured at length but Merrick deemed it unworthy of Broadway and it closed out of town.

Since 1977, LuPone has frequently collaborated with David Mamet, appearing in his plays The Woods, All Men Are Whores, The Blue Hour, The Water Engine (1978), Edmond, The Old Neighborhood (1997), and The Anarchist (2012). The New York Times reviewer wrote of LuPone in The Old Neighborhood, "Those who know Ms. LuPone only as a musical comedy star will be stunned by the naturalistic fire she delivers here. As Jolly, a part inspired by Mr. Mamet's real-life sister and his realized female character, Ms. LuPone finds conflicting layers of past and present selves in practically every line. She emerges as both loving matriarch and wounded adolescent, sentimental and devastatingly clear-eyed." In 1978, she appeared in the Broadway musical adaptation of Studs Terkel's Working, which ran for only 24 performances.

1979–1999: Evita and Broadway stardom

In 1979, LuPone starred in the original Broadway production of Evita, the musical based on the life of Eva Perón, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and directed by Harold Prince. She reportedly won the role over 200 auditionees, including Meryl Streep, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch. Although LuPone was praised by critics, she has since said that her time in Evita was not an enjoyable one. In a 2007 interview, she stated "Evita was the worst experience of my life," she said. "I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut and I fought like a banshee." Despite the trouble, LuPone won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina", a song she performed for the show, became one of her signature songs throughout her career. It was not until she had reprised the role in a production in Sydney when she had finally enjoyed the part and felt comfortable singing the score. LuPone and her co-star, Mandy Patinkin, remained close friends both on and off the stage.

In 1980, LuPone's cabaret act, "Patti LuPone at Les Mouches," played for 27 consecutive weeks on Saturday evenings at midnight following her 8pm performance in Evita. The New York Daily News reviewed saying, "Anyone who thinks there are no volcanoes in New York should check out Les Mouches any Saturday midnight in March. It’s here at the witching hour that Patti LuPone fulminates, thunders and showers the room with sparks of her debut cabaret act." In 2008, a restored recording was released as an album by Ghostlight Records.

In 1983, John Cassavetes and LuPone workshopped a production of a play called Thornhill by Meade Roberts. The play, directed by Cassavetes, starred LuPone as Eugene O'Neill's wife Carlotta Monterey, and Cassavetes as O'Neill. The production also featured cast members Ben Gazzara and Carol Kane.

Also in 1983, LuPone starred as Rosalind opposite Val Kilmer in As You Like It at the Guthrie Theatre directed by Liviu Ciulei. In the same year, founding alumni of The Acting Company reunited for an off-Broadway revival of Marc Blitzstein's landmark labor musical The Cradle Will Rock at the American Place Theater. It was narrated by John Houseman with LuPone in the roles of Moll and Sister Mister. The production premiered at The Acting Company's summer residence at Chautauqua Institution, toured the United States including an engagement at the Highland Park, Illinois' Ravinia Festival in 1984 and played in London's West End.

2000–2009: Sondheim revivals and acclaim

In November 2001, she starred in a Broadway revival of Noises Off, with Peter Gallagher and Faith Prince. LuPone has performed in many New York concert productions of musicals including Pal Joey with Peter Gallagher and Bebe Neuwirth, Annie Get Your Gun with Peter Gallagher, Sweeney Todd with George Hearn in both New York and San Francisco, Anything Goes with Howard McGillin, Can-Can with Michael Nouri for City Center Encores!, Candide with Kristin Chenoweth, Passion with Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald and Gypsy with Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti for City Center Encores!. Her performances in Sweeney Todd, and Candide were recorded and broadcast for PBSs Great Performances and were released on DVD. The concert staging of Passion was televised as part of Live from Lincoln Center. Since 2001, LuPone has been a regular performer at the Chicago Ravinia Festival. She starred in a six-year-long series of concert presentations of Stephen Sondheim musicals, which began in honor of his seventieth birthday. Her roles there have included Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Fosca in Passion, Cora Hoover Hooper in Anyone Can Whistle, Rose in Gypsy and two different roles in Sunday in the Park with George.

LuPone's television work also included a recurring role on her cousin Tom Fontana's HBO series in its final season, Oz (2003). She appeared as herself on a February 2005 episode of Will & Grace. She also appeared on the series Ugly Betty in March 2007 as the mother of Marc St. James (played by Michael Urie). LuPone had a recurring guest role as Frank Rossitano's mother on 30 Rock. LuPone appeared as herself in the season two finale of the television series Glee.

She returned to Broadway in October 2005 to star as Mrs. Lovett in John Doyle's new Broadway production of Sweeney Todd. In this radically different interpretation of the musical, the ten actors on stage also served as the show's orchestra, and LuPone played the tuba and orchestra bells as well as performing the score vocally. For her performance, she received a Tony Award nomination as well as Golden Icon Award for Best Female Musical Theater Performance. In August 2006, LuPone took a three-week leave from Sweeney Todd in order to play Rose in Lonny Price's production of Gypsy at Ravinia. Sweeney Todd closed in September 2006.

On February 10, 2007, LuPone starred with Audra McDonald in the Los Angeles Opera production of Kurt Weill's opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny directed by John Doyle. The cast recording of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was recognized at the 51st Grammy Awards as Best Classical Album and Best Opera Recording in February 2009.

2010–2019: Career expansion

In August 2010, LuPone appeared in a three-day run of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun where she played the title role opposite Patrick Cassidy at the Ravinia Festival, directed by Lonny Price. That same year, LuPone created the role of Lucia in the original Broadway production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which opened at the Belasco Theater on November 4, 2010, and closed on January 2, 2011, after 23 preview and 69 regular performances. LuPone was nominated for a Tony and Drama Desk, and an Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance. LuPone's memoir recounting her life and career from childhood onwards, was published in September 2010 titled Patti LuPone: A Memoir. It was a New York Times Best Seller.

In 2011, LuPone played the role of Joanne in a four-night limited engagement concert production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company at the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Paul Gemignani. The production starred Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby. Harris had previously worked with LuPone in the 2000 and 2001 concert productions of Sweeney Todd. The cast of Company performed the song "Side by Side by Side" at the 65th Tony Awards on June 12, 2011. LuPone made her New York City Ballet debut in May 2011 in a production of The Seven Deadly Sins directed and choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett. A piece she had previously performed, LuPone sang the role of Anna in the Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht score. LuPone concluded a 63-performance Broadway engagement of her concert with former Evita co-star Mandy Patinkin entitled An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin. The run started on November 21, 2011, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and ended on January 13, 2012. In late 2012, LuPone appeared with Debra Winger in the premiere of David Mamet's play The Anarchist.

In 2011, the feature film Union Square, co-written and directed by the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Award Winner, Nancy Savoca, was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In it, LuPone co-starred with Mira Sorvino, Tammy Blanchard, Mike Doyle, Michael Rispoli and Daphne Rubin-Vega.

LuPone guest starred on Army Wives on July 8, 2012. She reunited with fellow guest star Kellie Martin as her mother once again. LuPone appeared in the 2013 film Parker, an action-thriller. She voiced the character Yellow Diamond in the animated series Steven Universe (2013–2019) and Steven Universe Future (2019–2020). In 2013, LuPone was cast in the third season of the FX series American Horror Story as Joan Ramsey, a religious mother with a hidden past, and played herself in the third season of HBO's Girls.

2020–present

A transfer of the successful West End production of Company was set to open at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on March 22, 2020, coinciding with Stephen Sondheim's 90th birthday, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The production returned, featuring LuPone starring opposite Katrina Lenk, with previews starting on November 15, 2021, before officially opening December 9, 2021. LuPone won her third Tony Award for the role. On May 10, 2022, during a live conversation with the American Theatre Wing and her Company co-stars, Patti LuPone publicly addressed a patron who was not wearing their face mask properly, a violation of Broadway League COVID-19 safety protocols. LuPone later explained that the patron had already been warned by theater staff and had responded dismissively. Her passionate response highlighted the importance of adhering to safety guidelines to ensure the continued operation of Broadway. This incident led to increased attention on safety protocols and a subsequent extension of the mask mandate by the Broadway League, from May 31 to June 30, 2022. Following the closing of Company, LuPone resigned from Actors' Equity Association, the union for professional stage managers and actors in the United States.

In 2023 she played Beau's mother, Mona, in the Ari Aster surrealist horror film Beau Is Afraid. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Richard Kind, and Amy Ryan. LuPone received critical acclaim for her performance with David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter writing "[the film] features fabulous performances...most of all, LuPone in all her magnificent, scenery-chomping glory." Anthony Lane of The New Yorker also praised LuPone performance, comparing her role of an imperious mother to that of Angela Lansbury's in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

In 2023, LuPone played the role of Lilia Calderu, a centuries-old witch with divination powers, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney+ series Agatha All Along. Calderu is a Romani character in the comics. The series received mostly positive reviews from critics, with LuPone's performance in her character's central episode, "Death's Hand in Mine", being particularly praised. In 2025, Lupone's performance as Lilia Calderu received nominations for the Independent Spirit Award and the Critics Choice Award.

In 2024, LuPone returned to Broadway in The Roommate starring opposite Mia Farrow at the Booth Theatre.

In 2025, LuPone played Gianna "Gia" Ammato on And Just Like That (a sequel series to Sex and the City) she also appeared as a castmember in Season 2 of Palm Royale. and starred in The Network's limited series The Artist.

Solo concerts and tours

LuPone performs regularly in her solo shows Matters of the Heart; Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda; and The Lady With the Torch which sold out at Carnegie Hall. For example, she performed her one-woman show The Gypsy In My Soul at the Caramoor Fall Festival, New York, in September 2010. She also appears at venues across North America in concerts with Mandy Patinkin, at such venues as the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts in September 2010.

She appeared as the inaugural act at a new cabaret space, 54 Below, in New York City in June 2012. According to The New York Times reviewer, Nowadays Ms. LuPone generates more raw excitement than any other performer on the Broadway and cabaret axis, with the possible exception of Liza Minnelli.... And her brilliant show, conceived and directed by her long-time collaborator, Scott Wittman, deserves many lives, perhaps even a Broadway run in an expanded edition. It certifies Ms. LuPone's place in the lineage of quirky international chanteuses like Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf, who, like Ms. LuPone, conquered show business with forceful, outsize personalities while playing by their own musical rules. She also appeared as the inaugural act at the Sharon L. Morse Entertainment Center in The Villages, Florida, on April 30, 2015, to a sold-out audience of residents mainly 55 years-of-age and older.

In 2016, LuPone debuted the solo concert Don't Monkey with Broadway, which she continued to perform through 2023.

In 2023, she premiered Songs from a Hat, an audience-driven concert featuring songs and stories from throughout her career.Following performances across the United States, she took the production on its first international tour with engagements across Spain in 2026.

In 2024, LuPone premiered the autobiographical concert A Life in Notes, which traces her life and career through music and personal anecdotes. The production was subsequently presented across the United States, in London in 2025, and made its Asian debut at the WestK Cabaret Festival in Hong Kong in 2026. Earlier that year, she had revived her solo concert Matters of the Heart to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its original presentation.

Artistry and reputation

LuPone is widely regarded as one of the greatest Broadway performers of her generation and one of the most influential actors in musical theater. The London Times once nicknamed her the "first lady of the theater", and American-British journalist Hadley Freeman declared her "the queen of Broadway" and "the goddess of the modern musical". In 2010, theatre critic Charles McNulty wrote that her stage presence demonstrates a ferocity that, when paired with the right material, resembles "a return to a golden age when powerhouses ruled Broadway". AllMusic biographer William Ruhlmann noted that, unlike her predecessors Mary Martin and Ethel Merman, LuPone was never afforded the luxury to seamlessly transition between musical productions, instead using lulls in her Broadway career to diversify her endeavors by appearing in plays, films, television, nightclubs, concert tours, and recording solo studio albums. According to Susan Vaughn of the Los Angeles Times, LuPone is mostly known for playing "larger-than-life characters" on stage, whereas Adam Sandel of The Advocate observed "she's often played women who've fought like hell to overcome obstacles through the sheer force of indomitable will". She does not have Jewish heritage but has played many Jewish women, both on stage and screen.

LuPone believes she is often cast in ethnic parts because of her Italian heritage and prominent facial features, which allow her to play more interesting female roles. At the same time, she has expressed frustration at frequently being overlooked for roles she believes she is best suited for, often in favor of less qualified actors. She has stated she has been "bullied" by Broadway professionals for much of her career.

Music and theatre critics have described LuPone as a mezzo-soprano, which The Seattle Times said can equally "blast a big showtune out of the park, or sweetly murmur a lullaby". Vocally, she is known for her powerful, emotive style of belting, and according to Nerelle Harper of QNews set a new standard "for a modern generation of high-belt thrill trillers". To cope with some vocally demanding roles such as Evita, during which she lost her voice several times, she remained silent when not performing and limited social activities. After undergoing surgery to treat vocal nodules during the 1990s, she learned how to sing in a more operatic manner to preserve her voice, prior to which she admitted to relying on "sheer guts and willpower" to belt. She credits vocal coach Joan Lader with saving her career and teaching her "a technique to allow me to continue to sing with the strength and the clarity". LuPone has performed some operatic roles, despite having no formal operatic training. She has performed in several Sondheim musicals, and credits the composer with making her a better singer due to the difficulty of his material. In return, Sondheim has praised her singing, acting, and attention to detail, and thanked her for "enhancing my shows — and everyone else's for that matter". According to Andrew Gans of Playbill, LuPone belongs to a handful of singing actors who "are masters of stillness, bringing songs to full life with an inner well of emotions that seep out in unexpected and heartbreaking moments". However, her trademark diction has been criticized for sounding unclear, including by collaborators Andrew Lloyd Webber and John Houseman, the latter of whom reportedly strangled her over her enunciation. LuPone admitted that her emotional acting choices can compromise her diction. In addition to Sondheim, LuPone has identified performers Edith Piaf, Bette Davis, and David Mamet as influences, and expressed admiration for stage actresses Angela Lansbury, Zoe Caldwell, and Elaine Stritch, all of whose signature roles she would eventually play herself.

Personal life

LuPone is married to Matthew Johnston. The couple's wedding ceremony was on the stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center on December 12, 1988 after filming the TV movie LBJ, where Johnston worked as a cameraman. They have one child. They reside in Edisto Beach, South Carolina and Kent, Connecticut. In the 1970s, LuPone dated actor Kevin Kline for seven years after the two met as students at Juilliard.

Acting credits

Theatre

Sources: Playbill Vault; Internet Broadway Database; Internet Off-Broadway Database

Film

Sources: TCM; AllMovie

Television

Sources: TCM; AllMovie

Discography

Selected recordings include:

The Baker's Wife (Original cast recording)

Evita (Original Broadway cast recording)

The Cradle Will Rock (The Acting Company recording)

Les Misérables (Original London Cast recording)

Anything Goes (New Broadway Cast Recording)

Patti LuPone Live (Live Solo Album)

Heat Wave (John Mauceri conducting the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra)

Sunset Boulevard (World Premiere/Original London Cast Recording)

Matters of the Heart (Solo Album)

Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic recording)

Sweeney Todd (2005 Broadway Cast recording)

The Lady with the Torch (Solo Album)

The Lady with the Torch...Still Burning (Solo Album)

To Hell and Back (Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra World Premier recording)

Gypsy (2008 Broadway Revival Cast Recording)

Patti LuPone at Les Mouches (Live Solo Recording of 1980 club act)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Original Broadway Cast Recording)