Bernadette Peters life and biography

Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York . Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and eight Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.

Born Bernadette Lazzara on February 28, 1948 in New York City. This Tony-award winning actress made her Broadway debut at age 11 in Most Happy Fella. With bright eyes and bee-sting lips, Peters is best know for her comedic musical performances, finding particular success with period roles.

In 1968, she achieved national fame as Ruby, a chorus girl in the off-Broadway musical Dames at Sea. Though threatened to be typecast as a high-pitched airhead blonde, Peters dodged the bullet with the leading role in 1969's George M. The following year, she played Mabel Normand opposite Robert Preston's Mack Sennett in the musical comedy Mack and Mabel.

Though reluctant to leave her native New York City, Peters has occasionally traveled to Hollywood for a sporadic movie career. Her films include Silent Movie(1976) and The Jerk (1977), in which she plays the long-suffering wife of Steve Martin. She reteamed with Martin for Pennies From Heaven in 1981.

Feeling unfulfilled in Hollywood, Peters returned to Broadway in the mid 1980s, reclaiming her prominence in such musicals as Sunday in the Park With George, Song and Dance and Into the Woods. In 2003, she impressed Broadway critics when she starred in the revival of the 1959 classic Gypsy, about famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and her monstrous stage mother.

Peters was romantically involved with costar Steve Martin for several years. She married investment adviser Michael Wittenberg in 1996; he died in a helicopter crash in 2005.

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