LAURA BENANTI has brought her unique abilities to comedies, dramas and musicals since she took Broadway by storm at the age of 18. Laura most recently starred on Broadway as Eliza in My Fair Lady.
She received a Drama Desk award, Outer Critics Circle Award and a Tony Nomination for her starring role in the Broadway production of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for Lincoln Center, where she also starred in Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play. Ms. Benanti also demonstrated her comic flair in the Public Theater’s production of Christopher Durang’s Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them.
Ms. Benanti earned the 2008 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for her revelatory portrayal of Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy opposite Patti LuPone and directed by Arthur Laurents. Her other Broadway roles include her Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award nominated performance of Cinderella in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and her sultry Tony nominated turn in Swing! She also starred opposite Antonio Banderas as his muse in the celebrated revival of Nine. Benanti began her multifaceted career as Maria in The Sound of Music opposite Richard Chamberlain.
Other distinguished theater performances include Perdita in The Winter’s Tale at the Williamstown Theatre Festival opposite Kate Burton, Anne in A Little Night Music at the L.A. Opera opposite Victor Garber, and Eileen in City Center Encores Wonderful Town opposite Donna Murphy. Benanti completed a week-long engagement at the popular New York cabaret club, 54 Below, for which The New York Times hailed her as an “supremely confident” performer whose “bright, full soprano, with its semioperatic heft, can go almost anywhere.” In September 2013, she released her debut album, “In Constant Search of the Right Kind of Attention: Live at 54 BELOW” on Broadway Records to ecstatic reviews.
Ms. Benanti recently received raves for her performance as Elsa Schrader in NBC’s The Sound of Music LIVE, starring Carrie Underwood. She will soon be seen on The Good Wife and recur on HBO’s Nurse Jackie. Recently she starred in the NBC series The Playboy Club and Go On opposite Matthew Perry. Other television roles include co-starring on Starved, recurring roles on Royal Pains, The Big C, Law & Order: SVU, and Eli Stone, as well as guest starring on Elementary and Life On Mars. Benanti can be seen in the films Take the Lead and Meskada.
