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| Ms. Peters' mother started her off in show business by putting her on the television show Juvenile Jury at the age of three-and-a-half. She later appeared on Name That Tune and The Horn And Hardart Children's Hour. She took tap lessons, and at the age of nine got her Equity Card (under the name of Bernadette Peters, to avoid ethnic stereotyping). In her teen years she appeared in The Most Happy Fella (1959), was an understudy for Dainty June in the touring company of Gypsy, and was in The Penny Friend (1966) and The Girl In The Freudian Slip (1967). She first attracted critical notice in the Off-Broadway spoof of 1930s musicals, Dames at Sea. In films she is remembered mainly for the 1979 comedy classic The Jerk co-starring Steve Martin, whom she briefly dated. In theatre, she has come to be associated with Stephen Sondheim's music, appearing in his Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and, in 2003, returning to Gypsy as Mama Rose (the role made legendary by Ethel Merman). She has won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical twice: 1985 for Song and Dance and 1999 for a revival of Annie Get Your Gun opposite Tom Wopat. However, she was nominated several times: Mack and Mabel (1975), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), The Goodbye Girl (1993), and Gypsy (2003), as well as 1972 as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for On the Town. In 1994, she earned the Sarah Siddons Award for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre. In 1985 in an otherwise negative review of Song and Dance, critic Frank Rich remarked that "she has no peer in the musical theater right now." The difficult-to-please John Simon also raved about her performance in that show. She is frequently named one of the four greatest living musical divas alongside Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone and Elaine Paige. Of these, she is the only one who has not played Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard. Bernadette Peters was married to Michael Wittenberg, who died, at age 43, on September 26, 2005 in a helicopter crash in Montenegro. Wittenberg and Peters had been wed in July 1996 at the bucolic upstate home of Mary Tyler Moore, a longtime friend of Peters. She is also a good friend of Carol Burnett, and has made guest appearances on all of Burnett's series. Peters recently guest starred on the penultimate episode of NBC's Will & Grace as the sharp-tongued sister of Karen Walker, (Megan Mullally), aired on May 11 2006. |
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