Bernadette Peters

Bernadette Peters (born February 28, 1948) is an American actress and singer. Over the course of an enduring career starting at an early age, she has performed in musical theatre, films and television, as well as in solo concerts and recordings. Peters first performed on the stage in the 1960s and in the 1970s in film and television. In the 1980s she returned to the theatre, where she has been, for over two decades, one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway stars, being nominated for seven Tony Awards and winning two. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for Emmy Awards for three of her appearances and has won one Golden Globe Award. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.

Peters is particularly noted for her starring roles in the stage musicals Song and Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, becoming closely associated with the composers Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and in films including The Jerk and Pennies from Heaven.

She was born Bernadette Lazzara to an Italian-American family in Queens, New York, the youngest of three children. Her mother Marguerite started her in show business by putting her on the television show Juvenile Jury at the age of three-and-a-half. She later appeared on the television shows Name That Tune and The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour. In her teen years, she attended the Quintano School for Young Professionals.[1]