Bebe Neuwirth

She appeared in the musical revue Here Lies Jenny which featured songs by Kurt Weill sung and danced by Neuwirth and a four-person supporting cast, as part of an unspoken ambiguous story in an anonymous seedy bar possibly in Berlin in the 1930s.

Beatrice "Bebe" Jane Neuwirth (born December 31, 1958) is an American actress, singer, and dancer.

Known for her roles on stage and screen, she has received two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and a Drama Desk Award.

After graduating from Princeton High School in 1976, she attended the Juilliard School for dance and left after only a year, disliking the school for having a "stifling creative environment" and no Broadway-style dance training.

Immediately after leaving Juilliard in 1977, she took singing and jazz classes at a New York City-based YWCA, one of them taught by Joan Morton Lucas, who appeared in the film Singin' in the Rain (1952) and the original Broadway production of Kiss Me Kate.

She performed with the Princeton Ballet Company in Peter and the Wolf, The Nutcracker, and Coppélia, also appearing in community theater musicals.

Neuwirth made her Broadway debut in the musical A Chorus Line in 1980.

Studying acting for two years under Suzanne Shepard, Neuwirth made her Broadway debut in the role of Sheila in A Chorus Line in 1980.

She later appeared in revivals of Little Me (1982); Sweet Charity (1986), for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical; and Damn Yankees (1994).

While in Los Angeles waiting to receive a Tony for her appearance in Sweet Charity in 1985, Neuwirth auditioned for the role of Dr. Lilith Sternin in the television series Cheers.

At the time, Neuwirth was not interested in doing television work and her character was initially planned to be in only one episode of the series.

However, the writers enjoyed writing her dialogue so much that she was written into more episodes of the show, eventually making her one of the series' recurring actors.

She went on to receive two Tony Awards, the first for Best Featured Actress in a Musical playing Nickie in the revival of Sweet Charity (1986) and received her second for Best Actress in a Musical for Velma Kelly in the revival of Chicago (1996).

Other film roles include Say Anything... (1989), Green Card (1990), Bugsy (1991), Celebrity (1998), Summer of Sam (1999), and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003).

Neuwirth was born in Newark, New Jersey.

Her father, Lee Neuwirth, was a mathematician who taught at Princeton University and also designed an encryption device while working at the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Her mother, Sydney Anne Neuwirth, is a painter who also danced as an amateur for the Princeton Regional Ballet Company.

She has an older brother Peter, a mathematician and actuary who graduated from Harvard.

In her youth, Neuwirth rebelled against authority, being placed in custody for smoking marijuana when she was 13.

Neuwirth started taking ballet lessons at the age of five, a year after viewing a production of The Nutcracker with her mother.

She desired to be a ballet dancer until her early teens, when she realized how restricted her technique was, as well as the standard of ballet education where she lived.

Upon viewing the musical Pippin in Manhattan at 13, she changed her future plans from becoming a ballerina to being a Broadway musical dancer.

She has also starred as Lola in the revival of Damn Yankees (1994) and Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (2010).

On television, her breakthrough role was as Dr. Lilith Sternin, Frasier Crane's wife, on both the sitcom Cheers (in a starring role) and its spin-off Frasier (in a recurring guest role) and in the 2023 revival (in a guest role).

The role won her two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

In film, she portrayed Nora Shepherd in the original Jumanji (1995) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019).

1996 saw Neuwirth play Velma Kelly in the Broadway revival of Chicago.

She described the difficulty level of the role as "like performing microsurgery from 8 to 10:20."

That role brought her her greatest stage recognition to date and several awards including a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

The show ran from May 7 through October 3, 2004, in the Zipper Theater in New York.

Neuwirth was cast as Bureau Chief/ADA Tracey Kibre in NBC's Law & Order: Trial by Jury which ran for 2005 to 2006.

Here Lies Jenny was also presented by Neuwirth in San Francisco in 2005.

Neuwirth would later return to the revival of Chicago in 2006, this time as Roxie Hart.

In 2009, Neuwirth toured a one-woman cabaret show with pianist Scott Cady.

The cabaret included music by Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Tom Waits, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Kander and Fred Ebb amongst others.

In 2010, she returned to Broadway to create the role of Morticia Addams in the original production of The Addams Family opposite Nathan Lane.

She also appeared in recurring roles on Blue Bloods (2013–2019), The Good Wife (2012–2014), The Good Fight (2018–2021), and Julia (2022–2023).

She starred as Nadine Tolliver in the CBS political drama Madam Secretary from 2014 to 2017.

In 2014 she returned again, this time playing "Mama" Morton, making her the first person to play three different characters at three separate times during the course of a single Broadway run.

In 2019, Neuwirth returned to the stage with the Philadelphia Theatre Company, appearing at the Suzanne Roberts Theater in Philadelphia.