The Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical is the Tony Awards award given to the actress who was voted as the best leading actress in a musical, whether a new production or a revival. The award has been announced since 1948, but the nominees who did not win have only been announced since 1956.

1940s

• 1948: Grace Hartman
  Grace Hartman (actress)
  Grace Hartman was an American stage and musical theatre actress...
  
   – Angel in the Wings as various characters
  • No nominees

• 1949: Nanette Fabray
  Nanette Fabray
  Nanette Fabray is an American actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, and activist. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and then became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life...
  
   – Love Life as Susan Cooper
  • No nominees

1950s

• 1950: Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
   – South Pacific
  South Pacific (musical)
  South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
  
  as Ensign Nellie Forbush
  • No nominees

• 1951: Ethel Merman
  Ethel Merman
  Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
  
   – Call Me Madam
  Call Me Madam
  Call Me Madam is a musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.A satire on politics and foreign affairs that spoofs America's penchant for lending billions of dollars to needy countries, it centers on Sally Adams, a well-meaning but ill-informed...
  
  as Mrs. Sally Adams
  • No nominees

• 1952: Gertrude Lawrence
  Gertrude Lawrence
  Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End theatre district of London and on Broadway.-Early life:...
  
   – The King and I
  The King and I
  The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
  
  as Anna Leonowens
  • No nominees

• 1953: Rosalind Russell
  Rosalind Russell
  Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...
  
   – Wonderful Town
  Wonderful Town
  Wonderful Town is a musical with a book written by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein...
  
  as Ruth Sherwood
  • No nominees

• 1954: Dolores Gray – Carnival in Flanders
  Carnival in Flanders (musical)
  Carnival in Flanders is a 1953 musical with a book by Preston Sturges, lyrics by Johnny Burke, and music by Jimmy Van Heusen.Based on the 1934 French comedy film La Kermesse Héroïque, it is set in 1616 in the small Flemish village of Flackenburg, where a Spanish duke and his entourage descend upon...
  
  as Cornelia
  • No nominees

• 1955: Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
   – Peter Pan
  Peter Pan (1954 musical)
  Peter Pan is a musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and Barrie's own novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Mark "Moose" Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty...
  
  as Peter Pan
  • No nominees

• 1956: Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
   – Damn Yankees
  Damn Yankees
  Damn Yankees is a musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League...
  
  as Lola
  • Carol Channing
    Carol Channing
    Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
    
     – The Vamp
    The Vamp
    The Vamp is a musical comedy with music by James Mundy; lyrics by John La Touche; and a musical book by La Touche and Sam Locke which is based on a story by La Touche. The musical opened on Broadway on November 10, 1955 at the Winter Garden Theatre where it ran for a total of 60 performances until...
    
    
  • Nancy Walker
    Nancy Walker
    Nancy Walker was an American actress and comedienne of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director...
    
     – Phoenix '55

• 1957: Judy Holliday
  Judy Holliday
  Judy Holliday was an American actress.Holliday began her career as part of a night-club act, before working in Broadway plays and musicals...
  
   – Bells Are Ringing
  Bells Are Ringing (musical)
  Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at an answering service and the characters that she meets there. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Green's answering...
  
  as Ella Peterson
  • Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
    
     – My Fair Lady
    My Fair Lady
    My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...
    
    
  • Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
    
     – Happy Hunting
    Happy Hunting
    Happy Hunting is a 1956 musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, lyrics by Matt Dubey, and music by Harold Karr. The plot focuses on wealthy Philadelphia Main Line widow Liz Livingstone and her efforts to find a royal husband for her daughter Beth.-Plot:Liz Livingston and her...
    
    

• 1958: Thelma Ritter
  Thelma Ritter
  Thelma Ritter was an American supporting and character actress from the 1940s until her death in 1969.-Early life:...
  
   – New Girl in Town
  New Girl in Town
  New Girl in Town is a musical with a book by George Abbott and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill based on Eugene O'Neill's 1921 gloomy play Anna Christie, about a prostitute who tries to live down her past. New Girl, unlike O'Neill's play, focuses on the jealousy of the character Marthy and on...
  
  as Marthy and Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
   – New Girl in Town
  New Girl in Town
  New Girl in Town is a musical with a book by George Abbott and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill based on Eugene O'Neill's 1921 gloomy play Anna Christie, about a prostitute who tries to live down her past. New Girl, unlike O'Neill's play, focuses on the jealousy of the character Marthy and on...
  
  as Anna
  • Lena Horne
    Lena Horne
    Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
    
     – Jamaica
    Jamaica (musical)
    Jamaica is a musical with a book by Yip Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Harold Arlen. Harburg was blacklisted in Hollywood at the time of the writing of the musical...
    
    
  • Beatrice Lillie
    Beatrice Lillie
    Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie was an actress and comedic performer. Following her 1920 marriage to Sir Robert Peel in England, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.-Early career:...
    
     – Ziegfeld Follies
    Ziegfeld Follies
    The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
    
    

• 1959: Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
   – Redhead
  Redhead (musical)
  Redhead is a musical with music composed by Albert Hague and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, who with her brother, Herbert, along with Sidney Sheldon and David Shaw wrote the book/libretto...
  
  as Essie Whimple
  • Miyoshi Umeki
    Miyoshi Umeki
    was a naturalized American actress and standards singer. She was best known for her roles as Katsumi, the wife of Joe Kelly , in the 1957 film Sayonara, as Mei Li in the 1958 Broadway musical and 1961 film Flower Drum Song, and as Mrs. Livingston, the housekeeper of Bill Bixby's and Brandon Cruz's...
    
     – Flower Drum Song
    Flower Drum Song
    Flower Drum Song was the eighth stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. The piece opened in 1958 on Broadway and was afterwards presented in the West End and on tour...
    
    

1960s

• 1960: Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
   – The Sound of Music
  The Sound of Music
  The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
  
  as Maria Rainer
  • Carol Burnett
    Carol Burnett
    Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...
    
     – Once Upon a Mattress
    Once Upon a Mattress
    Once Upon a Mattress is a musical comedy with music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer and book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer. It opened off-Broadway in May 1959, and then moved to Broadway...
    
    
  • Dolores Gray – Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again
    Destry Rides Again is a western starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody, Jr., and Una Merkel. The original Max Brand novel was translated into an "oater" with the...
    
    
  • Eileen Herlie
    Eileen Herlie
    Eileen Herlie was a Scottish-American actress.-Life and career:Eileen Herlie was born Eileen Isobel Herlihy to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in Glasgow, Scotland, and was one of five children. Herlie was trained as a theatre actress. Among her West End London theatre successes were The...
    
     – Take Me Along
    Take Me Along
    Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...
    
    
  • Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
    
     – Gypsy

• 1961: Elizabeth Seal
  Elizabeth Seal
  Elizabeth Seal is a British actress. In 1961, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance in the title role of Irma La Douce.-Career:...
  
   – Irma La Douce
  Irma La Douce (musical)
  Irma La Douce is a musical with music by Marguerite Monnot and French lyrics and book by Alexandre Breffort. The English lyrics and book are by Julian More, David Heneker and Monty Norman. It was first produced in Paris in 1956.-Productions:...
  
  as Irma-La-Douce
  • Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
    
     – Camelot
    Camelot (musical)
    Camelot is a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe . It is based on the King Arthur legend as adapted from the T. H. White tetralogy novel The Once and Future King....
    
    
  • Carol Channing
    Carol Channing
    Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
    
     – Show Girl
    Show Girl
    Show Girl is a musical that ran from Jul 2, 1929 to Oct 5, 1929 with a book by William Anthony McGuire, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn, and music by George Gershwin. Its heroine, aspiring Broadway showgirl Dixie Dugan, was a character created by J. P...
    
    
  • Nancy Walker
    Nancy Walker
    Nancy Walker was an American actress and comedienne of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director...
    
     – Do Re Mi
    Do Re Mi (musical)
    Do Re Mi is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a book by Garson Kanin, who also directed the original 1960 Broadway production. The plot centers on a minor-league con man who decides to go straight by going into the business of juke boxes and music...
    
    

• 1962: Anna Maria Alberghetti
  Anna Maria Alberghetti
  Anna Maria Alberghetti is an Italian-born operatic singer and actress.Born in Pesaro, Marche, she starred on Broadway and won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress for Carnival! .Alberghetti was a child prodigy. Her father was an opera singer and concert master of the Rome Opera Company...
  
   – Carnival!
  Carnival!
  Carnival is a 1961 musical with the book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The musical is based on the 1953 film Lili.-Background:...
  
  as Lili and Diahann Carroll – No Strings
  No Strings
  No Strings is a musical drama with a book by Samuel A. Taylor and words and music by Richard Rodgers, his only Broadway score written without a collaborator. The musical opened on Broadway in 1962 and ran for 580 performances...
  
  as Barbara Woodruff
  • Molly Picon
    Molly Picon
    Molly Picon was an American actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a lyricist and dramatic storyteller....
    
     – Milk and Honey
    Milk and Honey (musical)
    Milk and Honey is a musical with a book by Don Appell and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The story centers on a busload of lonely American widows hoping to catch husbands while touring Israel and is set against the background of the country's fight for recognition as an independent nation...
    
    
  • Elaine Stritch
    Elaine Stritch
    Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
    
     – Sail Away
    Sail Away (musical)
    Sail Away is a musical with a book, music and lyrics by Noël Coward. The show was the last musical for which Coward wrote both the book and music, although he wrote the music for one last "book" musical in 1963. The story centers around brash, bold American divorcee Mimi Paragon, working as a...
    
    

• 1963: Vivien Leigh
  Vivien Leigh
  Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...
  
   – Tovarich
  Tovarich (musical)
  Tovarich is a 1963 musical play in two acts with book by David Shaw; music by Lee Pockriss and lyrics by Anne Croswell; based on the comedy by Jacques Deval and Robert E...
  
  as Tatiana
  • Georgia Brown
    Georgia Brown (English singer)
    Georgia Brown was a British singer and actress.Born Lillian Claire Laizer Getel Klot in the East End of London to Mark and Annie Kirschenbaum Klot, Jewish immigrants to the United Kingdom, she was dispatched to Wales during the Blitz to escape the bombings in London...
    
     – Oliver!
    Oliver!
    Oliver! is a British musical, with script, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens....
    
    
  • Nanette Fabray
    Nanette Fabray
    Nanette Fabray is an American actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, and activist. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and then became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life...
    
     – Mr. President
    Mr. President (musical)
    Mr. President is a musical with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and lyrics and music by Irving Berlin.It focuses on U.S. President Stephen Decatur Henderson, who loses his bid for re-election following a disastrous trip to the Soviet Union...
    
    
  • Sally Ann Howes
    Sally Ann Howes
    Sally Ann Howes is a British actress and singer, who currently holds dual British-American citizenship. Her career on stage, screen and television has spanned over six decades...
    
     – Brigadoon

• 1964: Carol Channing
  Carol Channing
  Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
  
   – Hello, Dolly!
  Hello, Dolly! (musical)
  Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....
  
  as Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi
  • Beatrice Lillie
    Beatrice Lillie
    Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie was an actress and comedic performer. Following her 1920 marriage to Sir Robert Peel in England, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.-Early career:...
    
     – High Spirits
    High Spirits (musical)
    High Spirits is a musical with a book, lyrics, and music by Hugh Martin and Timothy Gray, based on the play Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward, about a man's problems caused by the spirit of his dead wife....
    
    
  • Barbra Streisand
    Barbra Streisand
    Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
    
     – Funny Girl
  • Inga Swenson
    Inga Swenson
    Inga Swenson is an American actress.Inga Swenson was a graduate of Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, Class of 1950...
    
     – 110 in the Shade
    110 in the Shade
    110 in the Shade is a musical with a book by N. Richard Nash, lyrics by Tom Jones, and music by Harvey Schmidt.Based on Nash's 1954 play The Rainmaker, it focuses on Lizzie Curry, a spinster living on a ranch in the American southwest, and her relationships with local sheriff File, a cautious...
    
    

• 1965: Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
   – Flora the Red Menace
  Flora the Red Menace
  Flora the Red Menace is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Robert Russell, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The musical starred Liza Minnelli in the title role in her Broadway debut, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical...
  
  as Flora
  • Elizabeth Allen – Do I Hear a Waltz?
    Do I Hear a Waltz?
    Do I Hear a Waltz? is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was adapted from Laurents' 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo, which was the basis for the 1955 film Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn.-Background:Laurents originally...
    
    
  • Nancy Dussault – Bajour
    Bajour (musical)
    Bajour is a musical with a book by Ernest Kinoy and music and lyrics by Walter Marks. The musical is based on the Joseph Mitchell short stories The Gypsy Women and The King of the Gypsies published in The New Yorker...
    
    
  • Inga Swenson
    Inga Swenson
    Inga Swenson is an American actress.Inga Swenson was a graduate of Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, Class of 1950...
    
     – Baker Street
    Baker Street (musical)
    Baker Street is a musical with a book by Jerome Coopersmith and music and lyrics by Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel.Loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle, it is set in and around London in 1897, the year in which England celebrated the Diamond...
    
    

• 1966: Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
   – Mame as Mame Dennis
  • Barbara Harris
    Barbara Harris (actress)
    Barbara Harris is an American actress who was a Broadway stage star and later became a film actress. She appeared in such films as A Thousand Clowns, Plaza Suite, Nashville, Family Plot, Freaky Friday, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Grosse Pointe Blank...
    
     – On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
    On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
    On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is a musical with music by Burton Lane and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner based loosely on Berkeley Square, written in 1929 by John L. Balderston. It concerns a woman who has ESP and has been reincarnated...
    
    
  • Julie Harris
    Julie Harris
    Julia Ann "Julie" Harris is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame...
    
     – Skyscraper
    Skyscraper (musical)
    Skyscraper is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and music by Jimmy Van Heusen.Based on the 1945 Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, it focuses on an antiques dealer who is determined to save her midtown Manhattan brownstone from the bulldozer. The girders of a new skyscraper are...
    
    
  • Gwen Verdon
    Gwen Verdon
    Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
    
     – Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
    
    

• 1967: Barbara Harris
  Barbara Harris (actress)
  Barbara Harris is an American actress who was a Broadway stage star and later became a film actress. She appeared in such films as A Thousand Clowns, Plaza Suite, Nashville, Family Plot, Freaky Friday, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Grosse Pointe Blank...
  
   – The Apple Tree
  The Apple Tree
  The Apple Tree is a series of three musical playlets with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and a book by Bock and Harnick with contributions from Jerome Coopersmith...
  
  as Eve, Princess Barbára, and Ella and Passionella
  • Lotte Lenya
    Lotte Lenya
    Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
    
     – Cabaret
    Cabaret (musical)
    Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....
    
    as Fraulein Schneider
  • Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
    
     – I Do! I Do!
    I Do! I Do!
    I Do! I Do! is a musical with a book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt which is based on the Jan de Hartog play The Fourposter. The two-character story spans fifty years, from 1895 to 1945, as it focuses on the ups and downs experienced by Agnes and Michael Snow throughout their...
    
    
  • Louise Troy
    Louise Troy
    Louise Troy was an American actress of stage and screen. She is best known for her performances in Tovarich and Walking Happy , both of which she was nominated for a Tony Award...
    
     – Walking Happy
    Walking Happy
    Walking Happy is a musical with music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Sammy Cahn and book by Roger O. Hirson and Ketti Frings. The story is based on the play Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse...
    
    

• 1968: Patricia Routledge
  Patricia Routledge
  Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE is an English character comedy actress and singer. She is best known for her role as character Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates...
  
   – Darling of the Day
  Darling of the Day (musical)
  Darling of the Day is a musical with a book by Nunnally Johnson, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, and music by Jule Styne. It is based on Arnold Bennett's novel Buried Alive and his play The Great Adventure...
  
  as Alice Challice and Leslie Uggams
  Leslie Uggams
  Leslie Uggams is an American actress and singer, perhaps best known for her work in Hallelujah, Baby! She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.-Singing:...
  
   – Hallelujah, Baby!
  Hallelujah, Baby!
  Hallelujah, Baby! is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and a book by Arthur Laurents. The show is "a musical chronicle of the African American struggle for equality during the [first half of the] 20th century."...
  
  as Georgina
  • Melina Mercouri
    Melina Mercouri
    Melina Mercouri , born as Maria Amalia Mercouri was a Greek actress, singer and politician.As an actress she made her film debut in Stella and met international success with her performances in Never on Sunday, Phaedra, Topkapi and Promise at Dawn...
    
     – Illya Darling
    Illya Darling
    Illya Darling is a musical with a book by Jules Dassin, music by Manos Hadjidakis, and lyrics by Joe Darion, based on Dassin's 1960 film Never on Sunday.-Production:The show previewed in a tour of Philadelphia, Toronto and Detroit for nine weeks...
    
    
  • Brenda Vaccaro
    Brenda Vaccaro
    Brenda Buell Vaccaro is an American stage, television and film actress.-Early life:Vaccaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian American parents Christine M. and Mario A. Vaccaro , both of whom were pioneers in Italian cuisine...
    
     – How Now, Dow Jones
    How Now, Dow Jones
    How Now, Dow Jones is a musical comedy by Academy Award winner Elmer Bernstein, Tony Award nominee Carolyn Leigh and Max Shulman. The original Broadway production opened in December 1967. A critically acclaimed revised version premiered in August 2009....
    
    

• 1969: Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
   – Dear World
  Dear World
  Dear World is a Broadway musical with a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. With its opening, Herman became the only composer-lyricist in history to have three productions running simultaneously on Broadway...
  
  as Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot
  • Maria Karnilova
    Maria Karnilova
    Maria Karnilova was an American actress.Born as Maria Kasnilovich in Hartford, Connecticut, Maria Karnilova made her Broadway debut in Call Me Mister in 1946...
    
     – Zorba
    Zorba the Greek (musical)
    Zorba is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. Adapted from the 1952 novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis and the subsequent 1964 film of the same name, it focuses on the friendship that evolves between Zorba and Nikos, a young American who has...
    
    
  • Dorothy Loudon
    Dorothy Loudon
    Dorothy Loudon was an American comedy actress and singer. She won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Miss Hannigan in Annie.-Early life and career:Loudon was born in...
    
     – The Fig Leaves Are Falling
    The Fig Leaves Are Falling
    The Fig Leaves Are Falling is a musical with a book and lyrics by Allan Sherman and music by Albert Hague. It was inspired by Sherman's 1966 divorce following 21 years of marriage....
    
    
  • Jill O'Hara – Promises, Promises
    Promises, Promises
    Promises, Promises is a musical based on the 1960 film The Apartment. The music is by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, and book by Neil Simon. Musical numbers for the original Broadway production were choreographed by Michael Bennett; Robert Moore directed and David Merrick produced...
    
    

1970s

• 1970: Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
  
   – Applause
  Applause (musical)
  Applause is a musical with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical and Lauren Bacall won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical....
  
  as Margo Channing
  • Katharine Hepburn
    Katharine Hepburn
    Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
    
     – Coco
    Coco (musical)
    Coco is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by André Previn. It starred Katharine Hepburn in her only stage musical.-Background:...
    
    
  • Dilys Watling
    Dilys Watling
    Dilys Watling is an English actress, possibly best known for appearing on British television ....
    
     – Georgy
    Georgy
    Georgy is a musical with a book by Tom Mankiewicz, lyrics by Carole Bayer, and music by George Fischoff.Based on the Margaret Forster novel Georgy Girl and the subsequent 1966 film adaptation, it tells the story of awkward, overweight, dowdy music teacher Georgy; her beautiful, self-centered...
    
    

• 1971: Helen Gallagher
  Helen Gallagher
  Helen Gallagher is an American actress, dancer, singer and makeup artist.-Early years:Born in Brooklyn, she was raised in Scarsdale, New York for several years until the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression, and her family moved to the Bronx. Her parents separated and she was...
  
   – No, No Nanette as Lucille Early
  • Susan Browning
    Susan Browning
    Susan Browning was an American actress.Born in Baldwin, New York, she was nominated for two Tony Awards: for Best Actress in Company in 1971 and for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in Goodtime Charley in 1975...
    
     – Company
    Company (musical)
    Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
    
    
  • Sandy Duncan
    Sandy Duncan
    Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan is an American singer, dancer and actress of stage and television, recognized through a blonde, pixie cut hairstyle and perky demeanor...
    
     – The Boy Friend
    The Boy Friend
    The Boy Friend is a musical by Sandy Wilson. The musical's original 1954 London production ran for 2,078 performances, making it briefly the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history until it was surpassed by Salad Days...
    
    
  • Elaine Stritch
    Elaine Stritch
    Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
    
     – Company
    Company (musical)
    Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....
    
    

• 1972: Alexis Smith
  Alexis Smith
  Alexis Smith was a Canadian-born stage, film, and television actress. She appeared in several major Hollywood movies in the 1940s and had a notable career on Broadway in the 1970s, winning a Tony Award in 1972.-Life and career:...
  
   – Follies
  Follies
  Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
  
  as Phyllis Rogers Stone
  • Jonelle Allen
    Jonelle Allen
    Jonelle Allen is an American actress, singer, and dancer.Born in New York City, Allen grew up in Harlem's Sugar Hill among neighbors that included Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, and Johnny Hodges, all of whom had an influence on her career choice...
    
     – Two Gentlemen of Verona
    Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical)
    Two Gentlemen of Verona is a rock musical, with a book by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, lyrics by Guare and music by Galt MacDermot, based on the Shakespeare comedy of the same name....
    
    
  • Dorothy Collins
    Dorothy Collins
    Dorothy Collins was a Canadian/American singer, actress, and recording artist. She was born Marjorie Chandler in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and adopted her stage name in her mid-teens.-Radio and TV:...
    
     – Follies
    Follies
    Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
    
    
  • Mildred Natwick
    Mildred Natwick
    Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
    
     – 70, Girls, 70
    70, Girls, 70
    70, Girls, 70 is a musical with a book by Fred Ebb and Norman L. Martin adapted by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Ebb, and music by John Kander.The musical is based on the 1958 play Breath of Spring by Peter Coke...
    
    

• 1973: Glynis Johns
  Glynis Johns
  Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
  
   – A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
  
  as Desiree Armfeldt
  • Leland Palmer
    Leland Palmer
    Leland Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. He also appears in the prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
    
     – Pippin
    Pippin (musical)
    Pippin is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Roger O. Hirson. Bob Fosse, who directed the original Broadway production, also contributed to the libretto...
    
    
  • Debbie Reynolds
    Debbie Reynolds
    Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...
    
     – Irene
    Irene (musical)
    Irene is a musical with a book by James Montgomery, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, and music by Harry Tierney.Based on Montgomery's play Irene O'Dare, it is set in New York City's Upper West Side and focuses on immigrant shop assistant Irene O'Dare, who is introduced to Long Island's high society when...
    
    
  • Marcia Rodd
    Marcia Rodd
    Marcia Rodd is an American actress.Rodd was born in Lyons, Kansas, the daughter of Rosetta and Charles C. Rodd. She studied drama at Northwestern University....
    
     – Shelter

• 1974: Virginia Capers
  Virginia Capers
  Eliza Virginia Capers was an American actress.-Early life:Born in Sumter, South Carolina, Capers attended Howard University and studied voice at the Juilliard School in New York City. She made her Broadway debut in Jamaica in 1957...
  
   – Raisin
  Raisin (musical)
  Raisin is a musical theatre adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, with songs by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan, and a book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg....
  
  as Lena Younger
  • Carol Channing
    Carol Channing
    Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
    
     – Lorelei
    Lorelei (musical)
    Lorelei is a musical with a book by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Jule Styne. It is a revision of the Joseph Fields-Anita Loos book for the 1949 production Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and includes many of the Jule Styne-Leo Robin songs written for...
    
    
  • Michele Lee
    Michele Lee
    Michele Lee is an American singer, dancer, actress, producer, director and frequent game show panelist of the 1970s. She is best-known for her role as Karen Cooper Fairgate MacKenzie on the 1980s prime-time soap opera, Knots Landing...
    
     – Seesaw
    Seesaw (musical)
    Seesaw is a musical with a book by Michael Bennett, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.Based on the William Gibson play Two for the Seesaw, the plot focuses on a brief affair between Jerry Ryan, a young lawyer from Nebraska, and Gittel Mosca, a kooky, streetwise dancer from the Bronx...
    
    

• 1975: Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
   – Gypsy as Rose
  • Lola Falana
    Lola Falana
    Lola Falana is an American singer, dancer, and actress of Cuban and African American descent. Falana's father left Cuba to become a welder in the United States, where he met his wife...
    
     – Doctor Jazz
    Doctor Jazz
    Doctor Jazz is a popular tune and song written by Joe "King" Oliver in 1926.Publisher Walter Melrose got his name on it as co-composer, as was often his practice. It enjoyed its initial popularity in the 1920s. It continues to be played by Dixieland jazz groups...
    
    
  • Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
     – Mack & Mabel
    Mack & Mabel
    Mack & Mabel is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. The plot involves the tumultuous romantic relationship between Hollywood director Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand , who became one of his biggest stars...
    
    
  • Ann Reinking
    Ann Reinking
    Ann Reinking is an American actress, dancer, and choreographer. She has worked extensively in musical theatre, both as a dancer and choreographer, as well as appearing in film.-Biography:...
    
     – Goodtime Charley
    Goodtime Charley
    Goodtime Charley is a musical with a book by Sidney Michaels, music by Larry Grossman, and lyrics by Hal Hackady.A humorous take on actual historical events, it focuses on the Dauphin of France, who evolves from a hedonistic young man enamored of women in general into a regal king while Joan...
    
    

• 1976: Donna McKechnie
  Donna McKechnie
  Donna McKechnie is an American musical theater dancer, singer, actress, and choreographer. She is known for her professional and personal relationship with choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she collaborated on her most noted role, "Cassie" from the musical A Chorus Line, for which she...
  
   – A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line
  A Chorus Line is a 1975 musical about Broadway dancers auditioning for spots on a chorus line. The book was authored by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante, lyrics were written by Edward Kleban, and music was composed by Marvin Hamlisch....
  
  as Cassie
  • Vivian Reed
    Vivian Reed (actress)
    Vivian Reed is an African-American actress, singer, and dancer.BIOGRAPHYVivian Reed is a multi-award winner with two TONY nominations, Drama Desk Award, Theatre world Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Dance Education of America Award, NAACP Award and several others...
    
     – Bubbling Brown Sugar
    Bubbling Brown Sugar
    Bubbling Brown Sugar is a musical revue written by Loften Mitchell based on a concept by Rosetta LeNoire and featuring the music of numerous African-American artists who were popular during the Harlem Renaissance, 1920–1940, including Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Fats...
    
    
  • Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
     – Chicago
    Chicago (musical)
    Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
    
    
  • Gwen Verdon
    Gwen Verdon
    Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
    
     – Chicago
    Chicago (musical)
    Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
    
    

• 1977: Dorothy Loudon
  Dorothy Loudon
  Dorothy Loudon was an American comedy actress and singer. She won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Miss Hannigan in Annie.-Early life and career:Loudon was born in...
  
   – Annie
  Annie (musical)
  Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years with a blonde Annie as the poster...
  
  as Miss Hannigan
  • Clamma Dale
    Clamma Dale
    Clamma Dale is an African-American operatic soprano. She is best known for portraying the role of Bess in the highly successful 1976 Houston Grand Opera production of Porgy and Bess...
    
     – Porgy and Bess
    Porgy and Bess
    Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
    
    
  • Ernestine Jackson
    Ernestine Jackson
    Ernestine Jackson is an African American actress and singer.Born in Corpus Christi, Texas, Jackson made her Broadway debut in 1967 as Irene Molloy in the all-black cast of Hello, Dolly! starring Pearl Bailey....
    
     – Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...
    
    
  • Andrea McArdle
    Andrea McArdle
    Andrea McArdle is an American singer and actress best known for playing Annie in the Broadway musical Annie, as well as for her alto range and strong vocal belt.-Career:She was born in Philadelphia...
    
     – Annie
    Annie (musical)
    Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and the book by Thomas Meehan. The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years with a blonde Annie as the poster...
    
    

• 1978: Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
   – The Act
  The Act (musical)
  The Act is a musical with a book by George Furth, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander.It was written to showcase the talents of Kander and Ebb favorite Liza Minnelli, who portrayed Michelle Craig, a fading film star attempting a comeback as a Las Vegas singer. The thin plot was little more...
  
  as Michelle Craig
  • Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn
    Madeline Kahn was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comedic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.-Early life:...
    
     – On the Twentieth Century
    On the Twentieth Century
    On the Twentieth Century is a musical with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman. Part operetta, part farce, part screwball comedy, the story involves the behind-the-scenes relationship of a temperamental actress and a director.-Background:Comden and Green based...
    
    
  • Eartha Kitt
    Eartha Kitt
    Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...
    
     – Timbuktu!
    Timbuktu!
    Timbuktu! is a musical, with lyrics by George Forrest and Robert Wright, set to music by Borodin, Forrest and Wright. The book is by Luther Davis. It is a resetting of Forrest and Wright's musical Kismet...
    
    
  • Frances Sternhagen
    Frances Sternhagen
    Frances Hussey Sternhagen is an American actress. Sternhagen has appeared on and off Broadway, in movies, and on TV since the 1950s.-Personal life:...
    
     – Angel
    Angel (musical)
    Angel is a Broadway musical that opened at the Minskoff Theatre in New York on May 4th 1978.It was based on Ketti Frings’ theatrical adaptation of the best-selling Thomas Wolfe novel Look Homeward, Angel...
    
    

• 1979: Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
   – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
  
  as Mrs. Lovett
  Mrs. Lovett
  Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. She is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhemina and Claudetta are other names she has been given. First appearing in the penny dreadful serial The String of...
  
  
  • Tovah Feldshuh
    Tovah Feldshuh
    Tovah Feldshuh is an American actress, singer and playwright.-Early life:Terri Sue Feldshuh was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the daughter of Lillian and Sidney Feldshuh, who was a lawyer. She was raised in Scarsdale, New York, an affluent community in Westchester County and graduated...
    
     – Sarava
  • Dorothy Loudon
    Dorothy Loudon
    Dorothy Loudon was an American comedy actress and singer. She won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Miss Hannigan in Annie.-Early life and career:Loudon was born in...
    
     – Ballroom
    Ballroom (musical)
    Ballroom is a musical with a book by Jerome Kass and music by Billy Goldenberg and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.Based on Kass' teleplay for the 1975 Emmy Award-winning television drama Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, the plot focuses on lonely widow Bea Asher, who becomes romantically...
    
    
  • Alexis Smith
    Alexis Smith
    Alexis Smith was a Canadian-born stage, film, and television actress. She appeared in several major Hollywood movies in the 1940s and had a notable career on Broadway in the 1970s, winning a Tony Award in 1972.-Life and career:...
    
     – Platinum
    Platinum (musical)
    Platinum is a musical with a book by Will Holt and Bruce Vilanch, music by Gary William Friedman, and lyrics by Holt. Set in a Hollywood recording studio, it centers on Lila Halliday, a star of 1940s and 50s movie musicals who is attempting a comeback...
    
    

1980s

• 1980: Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
   – Evita as Eva Peron
  • Christine Andreas
    Christine Andreas
    -Biography:BroadwayAndreas was born in Camden, New Jersey. She made her Broadway debut in a 1975 revival of Angel Street. The following year she was cast as Eliza Doolittle in the 20th Anniversary production of My Fair Lady, for which she received the Theatre World Award...
    
     – Oklahoma!
    Oklahoma!
    Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
    
    as Laurey
  • Sandy Duncan
    Sandy Duncan
    Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan is an American singer, dancer and actress of stage and television, recognized through a blonde, pixie cut hairstyle and perky demeanor...
    
     – Peter Pan
    Peter Pan
    Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
    
    as Peter Pan
  • Ann Miller
    Ann Miller
    Johnnie Lucille Collier, better known as Ann Miller was an American singer, dancer and actress.-Early life:...
    
     – Sugar Babies
    Sugar Babies
    Sugar Babies is a musical revue conceived by Ralph G. Allen and Harry Rigby, with music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Al Dubin and various others. The show is a tribute to the old burlesque era...
    
    as Ann

• 1981: Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
  
   – Woman of the Year
  Woman of the Year (musical)
  Woman of the Year is a musical with a book by Peter Stone and score by John Kander and Fred Ebb.Based on the Ring Lardner Jr.-Michael Kanin screenplay for the 1942 Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy film of the same name, the musical changes the newspaper reporters of the original to television...
  
  as Tess Harding
  • Meg Bussert
    Meg Bussert
    Meg Bussert is an American actress, singer and a university professor.Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bussert received her BA degree from Purchase College and her MAT from Manhattanville College...
    
     – Brigadoon as Fiona MacLaren
  • Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
     – Bring Back Birdie
    Bring Back Birdie
    Bring Back Birdie is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse.A sequel to Bye Bye Birdie, it focuses on a scheme for rock 'n' roller Conrad Birdie, who disappeared after being discharged from the U. S. Army twenty years ago, to make a comeback on a...
    
    as Rose
  • Linda Ronstadt
    Linda Ronstadt
    Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
    
     – The Pirates of Penzance
    The Pirates of Penzance
    The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
    
    as Mabel

• 1982: Jennifer Holliday
  Jennifer Holliday
  Jennifer-Yvette Holliday is an African-American singer and Tony Award-winning actress. She started her career on Broadway in musicals such as Dreamgirls, and later became a successful recording artist...
  
   – Dreamgirls as Effie Melody White
  • Lisa Mordente
    Lisa Mordente
    Lisa Mordente is an American actress, singer, and dancer.Born in New Hyde Park, New York to choreographer and television director Tony Mordente and actress/dancer Chita Rivera , Mordente made her Broadway debut opposite Alexis Smith in the short-lived 1978 musical...
    
     – Marlowe
    Marlowe (musical)
    Marlowe is a musical with a book by Leo Rost, lyrics by Rost and Jimmy Horowitz, and music by Horowitz. Despite a claim in the Playbill that "the story of this drama is essentially true and accurate," much of it is a fictionalized account of the life of Elizabethan playwright Christopher...
    
    as Emilia Bossano
  • Mary Gordon Murray – Little Me
    Little Me
    Little Me was the parody "confessional" self-indulgent autobiography of "Belle Poitrine" , subtitled The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, by Patrick Dennis, who had achieved a great success with Auntie Mame...
    
    as Belle Poitrine
  • Sheryl Lee Ralph
    Sheryl Lee Ralph
    Sheryl Lee Ralph is an American actress, singer, and activist.-Personal life:Raised between Mandeville, Jamaica, and Long Island, New York, Sheryl Lee Ralph was born in Waterbury, Connecticut to an African American father and a Jamaican mother. Sheryl attended Uniondale High School in Uniondale, NY...
    
     – Dreamgirls as Deena Jones

• 1983: Natalia Makarova
  Natalia Makarova
  Nataliya Romanovna Makarova is the legendary Soviet-Russian-born prima ballerina. The History of Dance, published in 1981, notes that “Her performances set standards of artistry and aristocracy of dance which mark her as the finest ballerina of her generation.” She has also won awards as an...
  
   – On Your Toes
  On Your Toes
  On Your Toes is a musical with a book by Richard Rodgers, George Abbott, and Lorenz Hart, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. It was adapted into a film in 1939....
  
  as Vera Barnova
  • Lonette McKee
    Lonette McKee
    Lonette McKee is an American film and television actress, music composer/producer/songwriter, screenwriter and director.-Biography:...
    
     – Show Boat
    Show Boat
    Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
    
    as Julie
  • Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
     – Merlin
    Merlin (musical)
    Merlin was a musical based on a concept by popular illusionist Doug Henning and Barbara De Angelis, written by Richard Levinson and William Link, with music written by Elmer Bernstein and lyrics by Don Black....
    
    as The Queen
  • Twiggy
    Twiggy
    Lesley Lawson née Hornby known as Twiggy is an English model, actress, and singer. In the early-1960s she became a prominent British teenage model of swinging sixties London with others such as Penelope Tree....
    
     – My One and Only
    My One and Only
    My One and Only is a musical with a book by Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer and music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin.Written to incorporate classic Gershwin tunes from Funny Face and other popular shows into one evening of entertainment, the plot, set in 1927 America, revolves around Capt...
    
    as Edith Herbert

• 1984: Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   – The Rink as Anna
  • Rhetta Hughes
    Rhetta Hughes
    Rhetta Hughes is a R&B singer and actress. She starred in the Broadway musicals Dreamgirls, Don't Play Us Cheap, and Amen Corner, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award in the category Best Actress in a Musical in 1984...
    
     – Amen Corner
    Amen Corner (musical)
    Amen Corner is a musical with a book by Philip Rose and Peter Udell, lyrics by Udell, and music by Garry Sherman, based on the 1965 play of the same title by James Baldwin...
    
    as Margaret Alexander
  • Liza Minnelli
    Liza Minnelli
    Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
    
     – The Rink as Angel
  • Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
     – Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...
    
    as Dot/Marie

• 1985: no award

• 1986: Bernadette Peters
  Bernadette Peters
  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...
  
   – Song and Dance
  Song and Dance
  Song and Dance is a musical comprising two acts, one told entirely in "Song" and one entirely in "Dance", tied together by a love story.The first part is Tell Me On A Sunday, with lyrics by Don Black and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, about a young British woman's romantic misadventures in New York...
  
  as Emma
  • Debbie Allen
    Debbie Allen
    Deborrah Kaye “Debbie” Allen is an American actress, dancer, choreographer, television director, television producer, and a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities...
    
     – Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
    
    as Charity Hope Valentine
  • Cleo Laine
    Cleo Laine
    Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, DBE is a jazz singer and an actress, noted for her scat singing and vocal range...
    
     – The Mystery of Edwin Drood as The Princess Puffer/Miss Angela Prysock
  • Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
     – Jerry's Girls
    Jerry's Girls
    Jerry's Girls is a musical revue based on the songs of composer/lyricist Jerry Herman.-Production history:Created by Herman and Larry Alford in 1981, the show originated as a modest presentation at Onstage, a nightclub located in the theatre district in midtown-Manhattan . Writing in The New York...
    
    as performer

• 1987: Maryann Plunkett
  Maryann Plunkett
  Maryann Plunkett is an American actress who in 1987 won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance as "Sally Smith" in Me and My Girl....
  
   – Me and My Girl
  Me and My Girl
  Me and My Girl is a musical with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay. It takes place in the late 1930s in Hampshire, Mayfair, and Lambeth....
  
  as Sally Smith
  • Catherine Cox
    Catherine Cox (actress)
    Catherine Cox is an American actress. A regular on the Broadway stage in the 1980s, Cox's credits include the original Ethel McCormack in the production of Footloose, the musical Oh Coward!, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, and...
    
     – Oh Coward! as performer
  • Teresa Stratas
    Teresa Stratas
    Teresa Stratas, OC , is a retired Canadian operatic soprano. She is especially well-known for her award-winning recording of Alban Berg's Lulu.-Early life and career:...
    
     – Rags
    Rags (musical)
    Rags is a musical with a book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and music by Charles Strouse.-Production history:The Broadway production opened on August 21, 1986 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre with little advance sale and to mostly indifferent reviews, and it closed after only four...
    
    as Rebecca Hershkowitz

• 1988: Joanna Gleason
  Joanna Gleason
  Joanna Gleason is a Canadian actress and singer. She is a Tony Award-winning musical theatre actress and has also had a number of notable film and TV roles.-Early life:...
  
   – Into the Woods
  Into the Woods
  Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...
  
  as Baker's Wife
  • Alison Fraser
    Alison Fraser
    Alison Fraser is an American actress and singer who has appeared in concert at such venues as Carnegie Hall, The White House, Town Hall, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Tisch Center for the Arts, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Wilma, The Emelin, Joe's Pub and Symphony space.Fraser is a two...
    
     – Romance/Romance
    Romance/Romance
    Romance/Romance is a musical with a book and lyrics by Barry Harman and music by Keith Herrmann.The show is composed of two acts linked only by the common theme of love and one song performed in both acts...
    
    as Josefine/Monica
  • Judy Kuhn
    Judy Kuhn
    -Life and career:Kuhn was born in New York City and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.She entered Oberlin College in 1976. Although she was very interested in singing and theater, she began Oberlin in the College, not the Conservatory. After taking...
    
     – Chess
    Chess (musical)
    Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...
    
    as Florence
  • Patti LuPone
    Patti LuPone
    Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
    
     – Anything Goes
    Anything Goes
    Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
    
    as Reno Sweeney

• 1989: Ruth Brown
  Ruth Brown
  Ruth Brown was an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, composer and actress, noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and " He Treats Your Daughter Mean".For these...
  
   – Black and Blue
  Black and Blue (musical)
  Black and Blue is a musical revue celebrating the black culture of dance and music in Paris between World War I and World War II.Based on an idea by Mel Howard and conceived by Hector Orezzoli and Claudio Segovia, it consists of songs by artists such as W. C...
  
  as various characters
  • Charlotte d'Amboise
    Charlotte d'Amboise
    Charlotte d'Amboise is an American actress and dancer. She has played starring roles in musical theatre, and has been nominated for two Tony Awards and won the Los Angeles Ovation Awards for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Chicago...
    
     – Jerome Robbins' Broadway
    Jerome Robbins' Broadway
    Jerome Robbins' Broadway is an anthology comprising musical numbers from earlier shows that were either directed or choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Robbins won his fifth Tony Award for direction of the show....
    
    as various characters
  • Linda Hopkins
    Linda Hopkins
    Linda Hopkins is an African American actress and blues and gospel singer. She has recorded classic, traditional, and urban blues, and performed R&B and soul, jazz, and show tunes, all with distinction and style since the 1950s....
    
     – Black and Blue
    Black and Blue (musical)
    Black and Blue is a musical revue celebrating the black culture of dance and music in Paris between World War I and World War II.Based on an idea by Mel Howard and conceived by Hector Orezzoli and Claudio Segovia, it consists of songs by artists such as W. C...
    
    as Singer
  • Sharon McNight – Starmites
    Starmites
    Starmites is a musical with music and lyrics by Barry Keating and a book by Stuart Ross and Barry Keating, first presented at the Ark Theatre Company. It received a Tony Award nomination as Best Musical....
    
    as Diva

1990s

• 1990: Tyne Daly
  Tyne Daly
  Tyne Daly is an American stage and screen actress, widely known for her work as Detective Mary Beth Lacey in the television series Cagney & Lacey and as Maxine Gray in the television series Judging Amy. She is also known for her role as Alice Henderson in television series Christy...
  
   – Gypsy as Rose
  • Georgia Brown
    Georgia Brown (English singer)
    Georgia Brown was a British singer and actress.Born Lillian Claire Laizer Getel Klot in the East End of London to Mark and Annie Kirschenbaum Klot, Jewish immigrants to the United Kingdom, she was dispatched to Wales during the Blitz to escape the bombings in London...
    
     – Threepenny Opera as Mrs. Peachum
  • Beth Fowler
    Beth Fowler
    Beth Fowler is an American actress and singer.Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Fowler was a teacher with a fondness for Broadway theatre when she decided to audition for Gantry in 1970. She was signed for the chorus and as understudy for the lead, but the show unfortunately closed on opening night...
    
     – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
    
    as Mrs. Lovett
    Mrs. Lovett
    Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. She is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhemina and Claudetta are other names she has been given. First appearing in the penny dreadful serial The String of...
    
    
  • Liliane Montevecchi
    Liliane Montevecchi
    Liliane Montevecchi is a French actress, dancer, and singer.Montevecchi began her career as a prima ballerina in Roland Petit's dance company...
    
     – Grand Hotel
    Grand Hotel (musical)
    Grand Hotel is a musical with a book by Luther Davis and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, with additional lyrics and music by Maury Yeston....
    
    as Elizaveta Grushinskaya

• 1991: Lea Salonga
  Lea Salonga
  Lea Salonga-Chien is a mezzo-soprano singer and actress from the Philippines well known for originating the lead role of Kim in the musical Miss Saigon, for which she won the Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics and Theatre World awards.She was the first Asian to play the roles of Éponine and...
  
   – Miss Saigon
  Miss Saigon
  Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...
  
  as Kim
  • June Angela
    June Angela
    June Angela is an actress, singer, and dancer best known as Julie, the mainstay member of the Short Circus in the PBS children's television series The Electric Company during its entire six-year run.-The Short Circus:...
    
     – Shogun: The Musical
    Shogun: The Musical
    Shōgun: The Musical is a musical with a book and lyrics by John Driver and music by Paul Chihara.Based on James Clavell's 1976 epic novel and the 1980 television mini-series of the same name it spawned, it centers on shipwrecked English sea captain John Blackthorne, who finds himself drawn into a...
    
    as Lady Mariko
  • Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty is an American musical theatre actress. Over the course of her career, she has appeared in numerous high-profile Broadway productions and earned multiple Tony nominations for her performances.-Biography:...
    
     – The Will Rogers Follies
    Will Rogers Follies
    The Will Rogers Follies is a musical with a book by Peter Stone, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and music by Cy Coleman.It focuses on the life and career of famed humorist and performer Will Rogers, using as a backdrop the Ziegfeld Follies, which he often headlined, and describes every...
    
    as Betty Blake
  • Cathy Rigby
    Cathy Rigby
    Cathleen Roxanne Rigby , best known as Cathy Rigby, is a former gymnast, actress and speaker.-Early life:Rigby was born in Los Alamitos, California in 1952....
    
     – Peter Pan
    Peter Pan
    Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
    
    as Peter Pan

• 1992: Faith Prince
  Faith Prince
  Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical and received three Tony nominations.-Life and career:...
  
   – Guys and Dolls
  Guys and Dolls
  Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...
  
  as Miss Adelaide
  • Jodi Benson
    Jodi Benson
    Jodi Marie Benson is an American actress, voice actress, soprano singer, and Disney Legend. She is best known for providing both the speaking and the singing voices of Disney's Princess Ariel in The Little Mermaid and its sequels. In 2002 and 2006, she reprised the role of Ariel in the English...
    
     – Crazy for You
    Crazy for You
    Crazy for You is a musical with a book by Ken Ludwig, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. Billed as "The New Gershwin Musical Comedy", it is largely based on the songwriting team’s 1930 musical, Girl Crazy, but interpolates songs from several other productions as well...
    
    as Polly
  • Josie de Guzman
    Josie de Guzman
    Josie de Guzman is an American actress of Puerto Rican descent best known for work in the theatre. After studying at the Boston Conservatory of Music, Guzman made her Broadway debut in 1978 as Lidia in the original production of Elizabeth Swados's Runaways...
    
     – Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...
    
    as Sarah Brown
  • Sophie Hayden – The Most Happy Fella
    The Most Happy Fella
    The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
    
    as Rosabella

• 1993: Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   – Kiss of the Spider Woman
  Kiss of the Spider Woman (musical)
  Kiss of the Spider Woman is a musical with music by John Kander and Fred Ebb, with the book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the Manuel Puig novel El Beso de la Mujer Araña...
  
  as Spider Woman / Aurora
  • Ann Crumb
    Ann Crumb
    Ann Crumb is an American actress and singer.The daughter of composer George Crumb and sister of composer David Crumb, she made her Broadway debut in 1987 as a member of the original cast of Les Misérables...
    
     – Anna Karenina
    Anna Karenina
    Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
    
    as Anna Karenina
  • Stephanie Lawrence
    Stephanie Lawrence
    Stephanie Lawrence was a British musical theatre actress.-Background:Stephanie Lawrence was born in Hayling Island, Hampshire, the daughter of a singer and classically trained dancer.She was from an early age close friends with another Famous Islander Peter Chilvers who in 1958 invented the...
    
     – Blood Brothers as Mrs. Johnstone
  • Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
     – The Goodbye Girl
    The Goodbye Girl (musical)
    The Goodbye Girl is a musical with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by David Zippel, and music by Marvin Hamlisch, based on Simon's original screenplay for the 1977 film of the same name.-Production history:...
    
    as Paula McFadden

• 1994: Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
  
   – Passion
  Passion (musical)
  Passion is a musical adapted from Ettore Scola's film Passione d'Amore . The book is by James Lapine, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Central subjects include obsession, beauty, power, manipulation, passion, illness, and love...
  
  as Fosca
  • Susan Egan
    Susan Egan
    Susan Egan is an American actress and singer known for her work on the Broadway stage.-Early life and career:Egan was born in Seal Beach, California. She attended Orange County High School of the Arts and UCLA. In the meantime she started her career touring with the performance group The Young...
    
     – Beauty and the Beast
    Beauty and the Beast (musical)
    Beauty and the Beast is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice and a book by Linda Woolverton, based on the 1991 Disney film of the same name. Seven new songs were written for the stage musical...
    
    as Belle
  • Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty is an American musical theatre actress. Over the course of her career, she has appeared in numerous high-profile Broadway productions and earned multiple Tony nominations for her performances.-Biography:...
    
     – The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public
    The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public
    The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public is a musical with a book by Larry L. King and Peter Masterson and music and lyrics by Carol Hall.Ostensibly a sequel to the creative team's 1978 hit The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, it is more a series of burlesque-style sketches and musical interludes...
    
    as Mona
  • Judy Kuhn
    Judy Kuhn
    -Life and career:Kuhn was born in New York City and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.She entered Oberlin College in 1976. Although she was very interested in singing and theater, she began Oberlin in the College, not the Conservatory. After taking...
    
     – She Loves Me
    She Loves Me
    She Loves Me is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock.The musical is the fifth adaptation of the play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, following the 1940 James Stewart-Margaret Sullavan film The Shop around the Corner and the...
    
    as Amalia Balash

• 1995: Glenn Close
  Glenn Close
  Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...
  
   – Sunset Boulevard
  Sunset Boulevard (musical)
  Sunset Boulevard is a musical with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Based on the 1950 film of the same title, the plot revolves around Norma Desmond, a faded star of the silent screen era, living in the past in her decaying mansion on the...
  
  as Norma Desmond
  • Rebecca Luker
    Rebecca Luker
    Rebecca Luker is an American musical theatre actress and soprano who has appeared in several prominent Broadway productions.-Life and career:...
    
     – Show Boat
    Show Boat
    Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
    
    as Magnolia

• 1996: Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
  
   – The King and I
  The King and I
  The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
  
  as Anna Leonowens
  • Julie Andrews
    Julie Andrews
    Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
    
     – Victor/Victoria
    Victor/Victoria (musical)
    Victor/Victoria is a musical with a book by Blake Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and additional musical material by Frank Wildhorn...
    
    (declined) as Victor/Victoria
  • Crista Moore – Big: The Musical as Susan
  • Daphne Rubin-Vega
    Daphne Rubin-Vega
    Daphne Rubin-Vega is a dancer, singer, and actress. She is best known for originating the role of Mimi Marquez in the Broadway musical Rent, and the role of Lucy, in the Off-Broadway play Jack Goes Boating.-Biography:Rubin-Vega was born in Panama City, Panama, the daughter of Daphine Vega, a...
    
     – Rent
    Rent (musical)
    Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème...
    
    as Mimi Márquez

• 1997: Bebe Neuwirth
  Bebe Neuwirth
  Beatrice "Bebe" Neuwirth is an American actress, singer and dancer. She has worked in television and is known for her portrayal of Dr. Lilith Sternin, Dr. Frasier Crane's wife , on both the TV sitcom Cheers , and its spin-off Frasier...
  
   – Chicago
  Chicago (musical)
  Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
  
  as Velma Kelly
  • Pamela Isaacs
    Pamela Isaacs
    -Theatre:In 1987 Isaacs appeared in Conrack, a musical based on Pat Conroy's novel The River Is Wide, at AMAS Repertory Theater. The show is set in 1969 and recounts the adventures of Pat Conroy, a young white teacher who teaches black children on the remote South Carolina island of Yamacraw....
    
     – The Life
    The Life (musical)
    The Life is a musical with a book by David Newman, Ira Gasman and Cy Coleman, music by Coleman, and lyrics by Gasman.Based on an original idea by Gasman, the show explores the underbelly of Times Square's 42nd Street, inhabited by pimps and prostitutes, druggies and dealers, and runaways and street...
    
    as Queen
  • Tonya Pinkins
    Tonya Pinkins
    Tonya Pinkins is an American actress and author known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award.-Biography:...
    
     – Play On! as Lady Liv
  • Karen Ziemba
    Karen Ziemba
    Karen Ziemba is an American actress, singer and dancer, best known for her work in musical theatre.-Biography:Ziemba was born in St. Joseph, Michigan, and went on to attend the University of Akron , where she studied dance and joined the Ohio Ballet in her sophomore year.Her Broadway debut was in...
    
     – Steel Pier
    Steel Pier
    Steel Pier is a amusement pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, located opposite The Boardwalk from Trump Taj Mahal.The pier was owned by Trump Entertainment Resorts until 2011, when it was sold to the Catanoso Family under the "Steel Pier Associates, LLC" name. The Catanosos previously leased the...
    
    as Rita Racine

• 1998: Natasha Richardson
  Natasha Richardson
  Natasha Jane Richardson was an English actress of stage and screen. A member of the Redgrave family, she was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
  
   – Cabaret
  Cabaret (musical)
  Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....
  
  as Sally Bowles
  Sally Bowles
  Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by Christopher Isherwood. She originally appeared in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press. The story was later republished in the novel Goodbye to Berlin...
  
  
  • Betty Buckley
    Betty Buckley
    Betty Lynn Buckley is an American theater, film and television actress and singer. She is a Tony Award winner and Grammy Award nominee.-Early life:...
    
     – Triumph of Love
    Triumph of Love
    Triumph of Love is a musical with a book by James Magruder, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, and music by Jeffrey Stock.Resembling a chamber musical more than a traditional book musical, it is based on the 1732 Pierre de Marivaux commedia dell'arte play Le Triomphe de l'Amour and centers on Spartan...
    
    as Hesione
  • Marin Mazzie
    Marin Mazzie
    Marin Joy Mazzie is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theater. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for her role as Lilli/Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award...
    
     – Ragtime
    Ragtime (musical)
    Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
    
    as Mother
  • Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner
    Emily Skinner
    Emily Skinner is an American musical theatre actress and singer. She has performed in such Broadway shows as Side Show, James Joyce's The Dead, The Full Monty, Dinner at Eight and, currently, in Billy Elliot...
    
     – Side Show
    Side Show
    Side Show is a musical about Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins who make a change from being a circus act to becoming famous stage performers in the 1930s. The show was written by Bill Russell and Henry Krieger . The show starred Alice Ripley as Violet and Emily Skinner as Daisy...
    
    as Violet and Daisy Hilton

• 1999: Bernadette Peters
  Bernadette Peters
  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...
  
   – Annie Get Your Gun
  Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
  Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
  
  as Annie Oakley
  Annie Oakley
  Annie Oakley , born Phoebe Ann Mosey, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps...
  
  
  • Carolee Carmello
    Carolee Carmello
    Carolee Carmello is an American actress best known for her performances in Broadway musicals.She made her Broadway debut in a small role in City of Angels...
    
     – Parade
    Parade (musical)
    Parade is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The musical was first produced on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on December 17, 1998. The production was directed by Harold Prince and closed 28 February 1999 after only 39 previews and 84 regular...
    
    as Lucille Frank
  • Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty
    Dee Hoty is an American musical theatre actress. Over the course of her career, she has appeared in numerous high-profile Broadway productions and earned multiple Tony nominations for her performances.-Biography:...
    
     – Footloose
    Footloose (musical)
    Footloose is a 1998 musical based on the 1984 film of the same name. The music is by Tom Snow , the lyrics by Dean Pitchford , and the book by Pitchford and Walter Bobbie.-Act 1:...
    
    as Vi Moore
  • Siân Phillips
    Siân Phillips
    Jane Elizabeth Ailwên "Siân" Phillips, CBE, is a Welsh actress.-Early life:Phillips was born in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales, the daughter of Sally , a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker-turned-policeman...
    
      – Marlene as Marlene Dietrich

2000s

• 2000: Heather Headley
  Heather Headley
  Heather Headley is a Trinidadian-American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She has won one Tony Award and one Grammy Award.-Personal life:...
  
   – Aida
  Aida (musical)
  Aida is a musical with music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls, and David Henry Hwang, and produced by Walt Disney Theatrical....
  
  as Aida
  • Toni Collette
    Toni Collette
    Antonia "Toni" Collette is an Australian actress and musician, known for her acting work on stage, television and film as well as a secondary career as the lead singer of the band Toni Collette & the Finish....
    
     – The Wild Party
    The Wild Party (LaChiusa musical)
    The Wild Party is a musical with a book by Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe and music and lyrics by LaChiusa. It is based on the 1928 Joseph Moncure March narrative poem of the same name...
    
    as Queenie
  • Rebecca Luker
    Rebecca Luker
    Rebecca Luker is an American musical theatre actress and soprano who has appeared in several prominent Broadway productions.-Life and career:...
    
     – The Music Man
    The Music Man
    The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
    
    as Marian Paroo
  • Marin Mazzie
    Marin Mazzie
    Marin Joy Mazzie is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theater. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for her role as Lilli/Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award...
    
     – Kiss Me, Kate
    Kiss Me, Kate
    Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...
    
    as Lilli/Katharine
  • Audra McDonald
    Audra McDonald
    Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. She currently stars in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun...
    
     – Marie Christine
    Marie Christine
    Marie Christine is a musical written by Michael John LaChiusa. It opened on Broadway in 1999. Set in 1890s New Orleans and then 5 years later in Chicago; the story is loosely based on the Greek play Medea, and uses elements of voodoo rituals and practices...
    
    as Marie Christine

• 2001: Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Ebersole was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where she attended New Trier High School...
  
   – 42nd Street
  42nd Street (musical)
  42nd Street is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin, and music by Harry Warren. The 1980 Broadway production, directed by an ailing Gower Champion and orchestrated by Philip J. Lang, won the Tony Award for Best Musical and became a long-running hit...
  
  as Dorothy Brock
  • Blythe Danner
    Blythe Danner
    Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.-Early life:...
    
     – Follies
    Follies
    Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
    
    as Phyllis
  • Randy Graff
    Randy Graff
    Randy Graff is an American actress. Graff has been in feature films such as Keys to Tulsa and Rent as well as being in television shows such as NBC's Law & Order a number of times. In addition to film and television, Graff has been in several Broadway shows...
    
     – A Class Act
    A Class Act
    A Class Act is a musical with a book by Linda Kline and Lonny Price and music and lyrics by Edward Kleban. The musical is based on the life of composer-lyricist Ed Kleban, who died at the age of 48 in 1987...
    
    as Sophie
  • Faith Prince
    Faith Prince
    Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical and received three Tony nominations.-Life and career:...
    
     – Bells Are Ringing
    Bells Are Ringing (musical)
    Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at an answering service and the characters that she meets there. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Green's answering...
    
    as Ella Peterson
  • Marla Schaffel
    Marla Schaffel
    Marla Schaffel is an American actress, especially in musical theatre, noted for her award winning performance in the title role in the musical adaptation of Jane Eyre.- Personal life :...
    
     – Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre (musical)
    Jane Eyre is a musical drama with music and lyrics by composer-lyricist Paul Gordon and a book by John Caird, based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë. The musical premiered on Broadway in 2000.-Production history:...
    
    as Jane Eyre

• 2002: Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
   – Thoroughly Modern Millie
  Thoroughly Modern Millie (musical)
  Thoroughly Modern Millie is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by Dick Scanlan, and a book by Richard Morris and Scanlan. Based on the 1967 film of the same name, Thoroughly Modern Millie tells the story of a small-town girl, Millie Dillmount, who comes to New York City to marry for...
  
  as Millie Dillmount
  • Louise Pitre
    Louise Pitre
    Louise Pitre is an actress in musical theatre on Broadway and in Canada. She is best known for her role as Donna Sheridan in the ABBA-themed musical Mamma Mia!, which earned her a 2002 Tony Award nomination.-Biography:...
    
     – Mamma Mia!
    Mamma Mia!
    Mamma Mia! is a stage musical written by British playwright Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA, composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, former members of the band. Although the title of the musical is taken from the group's 1975 chart-topper "Mamma Mia", the plot is fictional, not...
    
    as Donna Sheridan
  • Vanessa Williams
    Vanessa L. Williams
    Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American pop-R&B recording artist, producer, dancer, model, actress and showgirl. In 1983, she became the first woman of African-American descent to be crowned Miss America, but a scandal generated by her having posed for nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine...
    
     – Into the Woods
    Into the Woods
    Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...
    
    as the Witch
  • Nancy Opel
    Nancy Opel
    Nancy Carol Opel is an American singer, actress, and teacher. She grew up in the communities of Prairie Village and Leawood, Kansas. She graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School and later trained at Juilliard....
    
     – Urinetown
    Urinetown
    Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...
    
    as Penelope Pennywise
  • Jennifer Laura Thompson
    Jennifer Laura Thompson
    Jennifer Laura Thompson is an American stage actress and singer. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan and graduated in 1991....
    
     – Urinetown
    Urinetown
    Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...
    
    as Hope Cladwell

• 2003: Marissa Jaret Winokur
  Marissa Jaret Winokur
  Marissa Jaret Winokur , sometimes credited as Marissa Winokur, is an American actress known for her performance as Tracy Turnblad in the highly successful Broadway musical adaptation of John Waters' film Hairspray, as well as her work on the Pamela Anderson sitcom Stacked...
  
   – Hairspray
  Hairspray (musical)
  Hairspray is a musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues...
  
  as Tracy Turnblad
  • Melissa Errico
    Melissa Errico
    -Biography:Born in Manhattan, Errico moved to Manhasset on Long Island at an early age. Her parents, a sculptor and a physician/concert pianist, supported her early interest in ballet, and gymnastics, and Melissa competed nationally as a gymnast...
    
     – Amour
    Amour (musical)
    Amour is a musical fantasy with an English book by Jeremy Sams, music by Michel Legrand, and lyrics by Didier Van Cauwelaert, who wrote the original French libretto....
    
    as Isabelle
  • Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
    Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
    Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is an American actress and singer known for her role as Carmen in The Color of Money, as well as for her roles as Lindsey Brigman in The Abyss, Gina Montana in Scarface, and Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.-Personal life:Mastrantonio was born in Lombard,...
    
     – Man of La Mancha
    Man of La Mancha
    Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...
    
    as Aldonza/Dulcinea
  • Elizabeth Parkinson
    Elizabeth Parkinson
    Elizabeth Parkinson is an American stage actress and dancer. She is best known for playing Brenda in the original production of the musical Movin' Out. For this performance she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for...
    
     – Movin' Out
    Movin' Out (musical)
    Movin' Out is a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Billy Joel.Conceived by Twyla Tharp, the musical tells the story of a generation of American youth growing up on Long Island during the 1960s and their experiences with the Vietnam War...
    
    as Brenda
  • Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
     – Gypsy as Rose

• 2004: Idina Menzel
  Idina Menzel
  Idina Kim Menzel is an American actress, singer and songwriter. She is widely known for originating the roles of Maureen in Rent and Elphaba in Wicked.-Early life:...
  
   – Wicked
  Wicked (musical)
  Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West , a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard...
  
  as Elphaba
  Elphaba
  Elphaba Thropp is a fictional character in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, as well as in the Broadway and West End adaptations, Wicked. In the original L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West is unnamed and little...
  
  
  • Kristin Chenoweth
    Kristin Chenoweth
    Kristin Chenoweth is an American singer and actress, with credits in musical theatre, film and television. She is best known on Broadway for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown , for which she won a Tony Award, and for originating the role of Glinda in the musical...
    
     – Wicked
    Wicked (musical)
    Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West , a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard...
    
    as Glinda
  • Stephanie D'Abruzzo
    Stephanie D'Abruzzo
    Stephanie D'Abruzzo is an American actress and puppeteer.-Early life:D'Abruzzo grew up in McMurray, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb she has described as a "plastic bubble kind of town." She graduated from Peters Township High School, where she was active in the theater program, and attended the...
    
     – Avenue Q
    Avenue Q
    Avenue Q is a musical in two acts, conceived by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, who wrote the music and lyrics. The book was written by Jeff Whitty and the show was directed by Jason Moore and produced by Kevin McCollum, Robyn Goodman, and Jeffrey Seller...
    
    as Kate Monster/Lucy the Slut
  • Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
    
     – Wonderful Town
    Wonderful Town
    Wonderful Town is a musical with a book written by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein...
    
    as Ruth Sherwood
  • Tonya Pinkins
    Tonya Pinkins
    Tonya Pinkins is an American actress and author known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award.-Biography:...
    
     – Caroline, or Change
    Caroline, or Change
    Caroline, or Change is a through-composed musical with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner and score by Jeanine Tesori that combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music....
    
    as Caroline Thibodeaux

• 2005: Victoria Clark
  Victoria Clark
  Victoria Clark is an American musical theatre singer and actress. Clark has performed in many Broadway musicals and in other theatre, film and television work, and her soprano voice can be heard on numerous cast albums and several animated films...
  
   – The Light in the Piazza
  The Light in the Piazza
  The Light in the Piazza is a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and music and lyrics by Adam Guettel. Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, it is set in Florence and Rome in the summer of 1953. A young American tourist, Clara Johnson, meets and falls for young Italian Fabrizio Naccarelli...
  
  as Margaret Johnson
  • Christina Applegate
    Christina Applegate
    Christina Applegate is an American actress. She is best known for playing Kelly Bundy on the Fox sitcom Married... with Children. Since then, she has established a film and television career, winning a Primetime Emmy and earning Tony and Golden Globe nominations...
    
     – Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity
    Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
    
    as Charity Hope Valentine
  • Erin Dilly
    Erin Dilly
    Erin Dilly is an American actress. She is most noted for her portrayal of Truly Scrumptious in the 2005 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and the Outer Critics Circle Award.Dilly was raised in...
    
     – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (musical)
    Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also known as Chitty the Musical, is a stage musical based on the 1968 film produced by Cubby Broccoli. The music and lyrics were written by Richard and Robert Sherman with book by Jeremy Sams.-Productions:...
    
    as Truly Scrumptious
  • Sutton Foster
    Sutton Foster
    Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
    
     – Little Women
    Little Women (musical)
    Little Women is a musical with a book by Allan Knee, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, and music by Jason Howland.Based on Louisa May Alcott's classic 1869 semi-autobiographical novel, it focuses on the four March sisters - brassy, tomboy-like, aspiring writer Jo, romantic Meg, pretentious Amy, and...
    
    as Jo March
  • Sherie Rene Scott
    Sherie Rene Scott
    Sherie Rene Scott is an American actress, singer and writer. She is a co-founder of Grammy winning Sh-K-Boom Records and Ghostlight Records and has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and plays appears on numerous solo and original cast recordings.-Life and career:Scott was...
    
     – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (musical)
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it is based on the film of the same name...
    
    as Christine Colgate

• 2006: LaChanze
  LaChanze
  LaChanze is an American actress, singer, and dancer. She won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical in 2006 for her role in The Color Purple....
  
   – The Color Purple
  The Color Purple (musical)
  The Color Purple is a Broadway musical based upon the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It features music and lyrics written by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, with a book by Marsha Norman. It ran on Broadway in 2005 and has been touring throughout the US...
  
  as Celie
  • Sutton Foster
    Sutton Foster
    Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
    
     – The Drowsy Chaperone
    The Drowsy Chaperone
    The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...
    
    as Janet Van De Graaff
  • Patti LuPone
    Patti LuPone
    Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
    
     – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
    
    as Mrs. Lovett
  • Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara is an American actress, singer, and songwriter.O'Hara has been nominated for three Tony Awards: for her performance as Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza; for her performance as Babe Williams in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Pajama Game, where she starred...
    
     – The Pajama Game
    The Pajama Game
    The Pajama Game is a musical based on the novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell. It features a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story deals with labor troubles in a pajama factory, where worker demands for a seven-and-a-half cents raise are going unheeded...
    
    as Babe Williams
  • Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
     – Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
    Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
    Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life is a musical revue based on the life of Chita Rivera, with a book by Terrence McNally and new songs by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens as well as songs from various other composers...
    
    as herself

• 2007: Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Ebersole was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where she attended New Trier High School...
  
   – Grey Gardens
  Grey Gardens (musical)
  Grey Gardens is an American musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, based on the 1975 documentary of the same title about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale by Albert and David Maysles. The Beales were...
  
  as Edith Bouvier Beale
  Edith Bouvier Beale
  Edith Bouvier Beale was an American socialite, fashion model and cabaret performer. She was a first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill...
  
  
  • Laura Bell Bundy
    Laura Bell Bundy
    Laura Ashley Bell Bundy is an American actress and singer who has performed in a number of Broadway roles, both starring and supporting, as well as in television and film. Her best known Broadway roles are the original Amber Von Tussle in Hairspray and the original Elle Woods in the musical...
    
     – Legally Blonde
    Legally Blonde (musical)
    Legally Blonde is a musical with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin and book by Heather Hach. The story is based on the novel Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown and the 2001 film of the same name. It tells the story of Elle Woods, a sorority girl who enrolls at Harvard Law School to...
    
    as Elle Woods
  • Audra McDonald
    Audra McDonald
    Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. She currently stars in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun...
    
     – 110 in the Shade
    110 in the Shade
    110 in the Shade is a musical with a book by N. Richard Nash, lyrics by Tom Jones, and music by Harvey Schmidt.Based on Nash's 1954 play The Rainmaker, it focuses on Lizzie Curry, a spinster living on a ranch in the American southwest, and her relationships with local sheriff File, a cautious...
    
    as Lizzie Curry
  • Debra Monk
    Debra Monk
    Debra Monk is an American actress, singer, and writer.Monk was born in Middletown, Ohio. She was voted "best personality" by the graduating class at Wheaton High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. She graduated from Frostburg State University in 1963...
    
     – Curtains
    Curtains (musical)
    Curtains is a musical with a book by Rupert Holmes, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander, with additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes....
    
    as Carmen Bernstein
  • Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
    
     – LoveMusik
    LoveMusik
    LoveMusik is a musical written by Alfred Uhry, using a selection of music by Kurt Weill. The story explores the romance and lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, based on Speak Low : The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, edited and translated by Lys Symonette & Kim H. Kowalke. Harold Prince...
    
    as Lotte Lenya

• 2008: Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
   – Gypsy as Rose
  • Kerry Butler
    Kerry Butler
    Kerry Marie Butler is an American actress known primarily for her work in theatre.-Early life and career:...
    
     – Xanadu
    Xanadu (musical)
    Xanadu is a musical comedy with a book by Douglas Carter Beane, music and lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar, based on the 1980 cult classic film of the same name which was, in turn, inspired by the 1947 Rita Hayworth film Down to Earth. The title is a reference to the poem, Kubla Khan, or A...
    
    as Clio
  • Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara is an American actress, singer, and songwriter.O'Hara has been nominated for three Tony Awards: for her performance as Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza; for her performance as Babe Williams in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Pajama Game, where she starred...
    
     – South Pacific
    South Pacific (musical)
    South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
    
    as Nellie Forbush
  • Faith Prince
    Faith Prince
    Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical and received three Tony nominations.-Life and career:...
    
     – A Catered Affair
    A Catered Affair
    A Catered Affair is a musical with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by John Bucchino. It is based on both the 1956 film The Catered Affair written by Gore Vidal and the original 1955 teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky, set in 1953 in the Bronx...
    
    as Aggie Hurley
  • Jenna Russell
    Jenna Russell
    Jenna Russell is an English actress and singer. She has appeared on the stage in London in both musicals and dramas, as well as appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company...
    
     – Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...
    
    as Dot

• 2009: Alice Ripley – Next to Normal as Diana Goodman
  • Stockard Channing
    Stockard Channing
    Stockard Channing is an American stage, film and television actress. She is known for her portrayal of First Lady Abbey Bartlet in the NBC television series The West Wing; for playing Betty Rizzo in the film Grease; and for her role as Ouisa Kittredge in the play Six Degrees of Separation and its...
    
     – Pal Joey as Vera Simpson
  • Sutton Foster
    Sutton Foster
    Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
    
     – Shrek the Musical as Princess Fiona
  • Allison Janney
    Allison Janney
    Allison Brooks Janney is an American actress, best known for her role as C.J. Cregg on the television series The West Wing.- Personal life :...
    
     – 9 to 5
    9 to 5 (musical)
    9 to 5: The Musical is a stage musical with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton and a book by Patricia Resnick, based on the 1980 movie Nine to Five...
    
    as Violet Newstead
  • Josefina Scaglione
    Josefina Scaglione
    Josefina Scaglione is an Argentinian musical theatre actress, best known for her performance as Maria in the 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Musical....
    
     – West Side Story as Maria

2010s

• 2010: Catherine Zeta-Jones
  Catherine Zeta-Jones
  Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE, is a British actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film The Mask of...
  
   – A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
  
  as Desiree Armfeldt
  • Kate Baldwin
    Kate Baldwin
    -Biography:Born in Evanston, Illinois, Baldwin graduated from the theatre program at Northwestern University in 1997.-Career:Kate Baldwin made her Broadway debut in The Full Monty in 2000, followed by appearances in Thoroughly Modern Millie and Wonderful Town...
    
     – Finian's Rainbow
    Finian's Rainbow
    Finian's Rainbow is a musical with a book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, lyrics by Harburg, and music by Burton Lane. The 1947 Broadway production ran for 725 performances. Several revivals and a 1968 film version followed. A Broadway revival ran from October 8, 2009 until January 17, 2010...
    
    as Sharon
  • Montego Glover
    Montego Glover
    Montego Glover is an American stage actress and singer. She has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in the musical Memphis and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical.-Biography:...
    
     – Memphis
    Memphis (Musical)
    Memphis is a musical by David Bryan and Joe DiPietro . It is loosely based on Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips, one of the first white DJs to play black music in the 1950s...
    
    as Felicia
  • Christiane Noll
    Christiane Noll
    Christiane Noll is an American singer and actress known for her work in musicals and on the concert stage. She is perhaps best known for originating the role of Emma Carew in Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde, as well as her roles in Urinetown and City of Angels.-Life and career:Noll was born in New...
    
     – Ragtime
    Ragtime (musical)
    Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
    
    as Mother
  • Sherie Rene Scott
    Sherie Rene Scott
    Sherie Rene Scott is an American actress, singer and writer. She is a co-founder of Grammy winning Sh-K-Boom Records and Ghostlight Records and has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and plays appears on numerous solo and original cast recordings.-Life and career:Scott was...
    
     – Everyday Rapture
    Everyday Rapture
    Everyday Rapture is a musical with a book written by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan and music by various composers. It ran Off-Broadway in 2009 and opened on Broadway in 2010...
    
    as Sherie

• 2011: Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
   – Anything Goes
  Anything Goes
  Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
  
  as Reno Sweeney
  • Beth Leavel
    Beth Leavel
    -Biography:Leavel was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. She attended Meredith College, earning a degree in social work. She completed a graduate theatre degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1980. She acted during college, appearing in productions such as Cabaret and Hello,...
    
     – Baby It's You!
    Baby It's You!
    Baby It's You! is a jukebox musical written by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott, featuring the music of the 1960s pop group The Shirelles. The show "tells the story of Florence Greenberg and Scepter Records, the label Florence started when she signed The Shirelles." After several tryouts and...
    
    as Florence Greenberg
  • Patina Miller
    Patina Miller
    Patina Miller is an American actress and singer.Miller is best known for originating the role of disco diva wannabe Deloris Van Cartier in the 2009 West End and 2011 Broadway productions of Sister Act the Musical.-Early life:...
    
     – Sister Act as Deloris Van Cartier
  • Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
    
     – The People in the Picture
    The People in the Picture
    The People in the Picture is a musical with book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart and music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler. The musical is about a grandmother recalling her life in the Yiddish theater and the Holocaust.-Production:...
    
    as Raisel / Bubbie

Multiple winners

4 Wins

• Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
  

3 Wins

• Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
  
• Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
   (tied with Thelma Ritter in 1958)

2 Wins

• Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
  
  
• Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Ebersole was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where she attended New Trier High School...
  
  
• Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
  
• Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
  
• Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
  
• Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
  
  
• Bernadette Peters
  Bernadette Peters
  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...
  
  
• Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
  

Multiple nominees

7 Nominations

• Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
  

6 Nominations

• Bernadette Peters
  Bernadette Peters
  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...
  
  

5 Nominations

• Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
  
• Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
  
• Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy
  Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
  
  

4 Nominations

• Carol Channing
  Carol Channing
  Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
  
  
• Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
  
• Angela Lansbury
  Angela Lansbury
  Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
  
  
• Patti LuPone
  Patti LuPone
  Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
  
  

3 Nominations

• Julie Andrews
  Julie Andrews
  Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
  
   (however, Ms. Andrews did not accept her third nomination)
• Dee Hoty
  Dee Hoty
  Dee Hoty is an American musical theatre actress. Over the course of her career, she has appeared in numerous high-profile Broadway productions and earned multiple Tony nominations for her performances.-Biography:...
  
  
• Dorothy Loudon
  Dorothy Loudon
  Dorothy Loudon was an American comedy actress and singer. She won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Miss Hannigan in Annie.-Early life and career:Loudon was born in...
  
  
• Ethel Merman
  Ethel Merman
  Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
  
  
• Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
  
• Faith Prince
  Faith Prince
  Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical and received three Tony nominations.-Life and career:...
  
  

2 Nominations

• Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall
  Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
  
  
• Sandy Duncan
  Sandy Duncan
  Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan is an American singer, dancer and actress of stage and television, recognized through a blonde, pixie cut hairstyle and perky demeanor...
  
  
• Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole
  Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Ebersole was born in Winnetka, Illinois, where she attended New Trier High School...
  
  
• Nanette Fabray
  Nanette Fabray
  Nanette Fabray is an American actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, and activist. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and then became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life...
  
  
• Dolores Gray
• Barbara Harris
  Barbara Harris (actress)
  Barbara Harris is an American actress who was a Broadway stage star and later became a film actress. She appeared in such films as A Thousand Clowns, Plaza Suite, Nashville, Family Plot, Freaky Friday, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Grosse Pointe Blank...
  
  
• Judy Kuhn
  Judy Kuhn
  -Life and career:Kuhn was born in New York City and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. She attended Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.She entered Oberlin College in 1976. Although she was very interested in singing and theater, she began Oberlin in the College, not the Conservatory. After taking...
  
  
• Beatrice Lillie
  Beatrice Lillie
  Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie was an actress and comedic performer. Following her 1920 marriage to Sir Robert Peel in England, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.-Early career:...
  
  
• Rebecca Luker
  Rebecca Luker
  Rebecca Luker is an American musical theatre actress and soprano who has appeared in several prominent Broadway productions.-Life and career:...
  
  
• Marin Mazzie
  Marin Mazzie
  Marin Joy Mazzie is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theater. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for her role as Lilli/Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award...
  
  
• Audra McDonald
  Audra McDonald
  Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. She currently stars in the ABC television drama Private Practice as Dr. Naomi Bennett. She has appeared on the stage in both musicals and dramas, such as Ragtime and A Raisin in the Sun...
  
  
• Kelli O'Hara
  Kelli O'Hara
  Kelli O'Hara is an American actress, singer, and songwriter.O'Hara has been nominated for three Tony Awards: for her performance as Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza; for her performance as Babe Williams in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Pajama Game, where she starred...
  
  
• Tonya Pinkins
  Tonya Pinkins
  Tonya Pinkins is an American actress and author known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway, for which she won a Tony Award.-Biography:...
  
  
• Sherie Rene Scott
  Sherie Rene Scott
  Sherie Rene Scott is an American actress, singer and writer. She is a co-founder of Grammy winning Sh-K-Boom Records and Ghostlight Records and has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and plays appears on numerous solo and original cast recordings.-Life and career:Scott was...
  
  
• Alice Ripley
• Alexis Smith
  Alexis Smith
  Alexis Smith was a Canadian-born stage, film, and television actress. She appeared in several major Hollywood movies in the 1940s and had a notable career on Broadway in the 1970s, winning a Tony Award in 1972.-Life and career:...
  
  
• Elaine Stritch
  Elaine Stritch
  Elaine Stritch is an American actress and vocalist. She has appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many television programs...
  
  
• Inga Swenson
  Inga Swenson
  Inga Swenson is an American actress.Inga Swenson was a graduate of Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, Class of 1950...
  
  
• Nancy Walker
  Nancy Walker
  Nancy Walker was an American actress and comedienne of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director...
  
  
• Georgia Brown
  Georgia Brown (English singer)
  Georgia Brown was a British singer and actress.Born Lillian Claire Laizer Getel Klot in the East End of London to Mark and Annie Kirschenbaum Klot, Jewish immigrants to the United Kingdom, she was dispatched to Wales during the Blitz to escape the bombings in London...
  
  

Statistics

• There have been three ties in the history of this category:
  • 1958: Between Gwen Verdon
    Gwen Verdon
    Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
    
     (New Girl in Town
    New Girl in Town
    New Girl in Town is a musical with a book by George Abbott and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill based on Eugene O'Neill's 1921 gloomy play Anna Christie, about a prostitute who tries to live down her past. New Girl, unlike O'Neill's play, focuses on the jealousy of the character Marthy and on...
    
    ) and Thelma Ritter
    Thelma Ritter
    Thelma Ritter was an American supporting and character actress from the 1940s until her death in 1969.-Early life:...
    
     (New Girl in Town
    New Girl in Town
    New Girl in Town is a musical with a book by George Abbott and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill based on Eugene O'Neill's 1921 gloomy play Anna Christie, about a prostitute who tries to live down her past. New Girl, unlike O'Neill's play, focuses on the jealousy of the character Marthy and on...
    
    );
  • 1962: Between Anna Maria Alberghetti
    Anna Maria Alberghetti
    Anna Maria Alberghetti is an Italian-born operatic singer and actress.Born in Pesaro, Marche, she starred on Broadway and won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress for Carnival! .Alberghetti was a child prodigy. Her father was an opera singer and concert master of the Rome Opera Company...
    
     (Carnival!
    Carnival!
    Carnival is a 1961 musical with the book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. The musical is based on the 1953 film Lili.-Background:...
    
    ) and Diahann Carroll (No Strings
    No Strings
    No Strings is a musical drama with a book by Samuel A. Taylor and words and music by Richard Rodgers, his only Broadway score written without a collaborator. The musical opened on Broadway in 1962 and ran for 580 performances...
    
    );
  • 1968: Between Patricia Routledge
    Patricia Routledge
    Katherine Patricia Routledge, CBE is an English character comedy actress and singer. She is best known for her role as character Hyacinth Bucket in the British television series Keeping Up Appearances and Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates...
    
     (Darling of the Day
    Darling of the Day (musical)
    Darling of the Day is a musical with a book by Nunnally Johnson, lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, and music by Jule Styne. It is based on Arnold Bennett's novel Buried Alive and his play The Great Adventure...
    
    ) and Leslie Uggams
    Leslie Uggams
    Leslie Uggams is an American actress and singer, perhaps best known for her work in Hallelujah, Baby! She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.-Singing:...
    
     (Hallelujah, Baby!
    Hallelujah, Baby!
    Hallelujah, Baby! is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and a book by Arthur Laurents. The show is "a musical chronicle of the African American struggle for equality during the [first half of the] 20th century."...
    
    ).

• The female lead role of Mama Rose in Gypsy has received the most nominations in Tony Awards history in this category, with five. There have been three winners:
  • 1960 - Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman
    Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...
    
    
  • 1975 - Angela Lansbury
    Angela Lansbury
    Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
    
     (winner)
  • 1990 - Tyne Daly
    Tyne Daly
    Tyne Daly is an American stage and screen actress, widely known for her work as Detective Mary Beth Lacey in the television series Cagney & Lacey and as Maxine Gray in the television series Judging Amy. She is also known for her role as Alice Henderson in television series Christy...
    
     (winner)
  • 2003 - Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
    
  • 2008 - Patti LuPone
    Patti LuPone
    Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
    
     (winner)

• Other female roles with multiple wins are Anna Leonowens in The King and I
  The King and I
  The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
  
  , with 2 wins out of 2 nominations:
  • 1952 - Gertrude Lawrence
    Gertrude Lawrence
    Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End theatre district of London and on Broadway.-Early life:...
    
    
  • 1996 - Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy
    Donna Murphy is an American stage, film, television actress and singer.Murphy has won two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles in Passion as Fosca and in The King and I as Anna Leonowens...
    
    

• and Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music
  A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...
  
  , also with 2 wins out of 2 nominations:
  • 1973 - Glynis Johns
    Glynis Johns
    Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
    
    
  • 2010 - Catherine Zeta-Jones
    Catherine Zeta-Jones
    Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE, is a British actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film The Mask of...
    
    

• The closest in nominations is the female lead role of Mrs. Lovett
  Mrs. Lovett
  Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. She is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhemina and Claudetta are other names she has been given. First appearing in the penny dreadful serial The String of...
  
   in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1936 British film produced and directed by George King.-Plot:The film features Tod Slaughter in one of his most famous roles as barber Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd was wrongly sentenced to life in prison. After his release 15 years later, he begins...
  
  , with 3. There has been one win:
  • 1979 - Angela Lansbury
    Angela Lansbury
    Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
    
     (winner)
  • 1990 - Beth Fowler
    Beth Fowler
    Beth Fowler is an American actress and singer.Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Fowler was a teacher with a fondness for Broadway theatre when she decided to audition for Gantry in 1970. She was signed for the chorus and as understudy for the lead, but the show unfortunately closed on opening night...
    
    
  • 2006 - Patti LuPone
    Patti LuPone
    Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
    
    

• Also with 3 nominations is the female lead role of Charity Hope Valentine in Sweet Charity
  Sweet Charity
  Sweet Charity is a musical with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and book by Neil Simon. It was directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse starring his wife and muse Gwen Verdon. It is based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for Nights of Cabiria...
  
  . However, not once has an actress won a Tony Award for this role. Between each nomination there has been a gap of nearly two decades:
  • 1966 - Gwen Verdon
    Gwen Verdon
    Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
    
    
  • 1986 - Debbie Allen
    Debbie Allen
    Deborrah Kaye “Debbie” Allen is an American actress, dancer, choreographer, television director, television producer, and a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities...
    
    
  • 2005 - Christina Applegate
    Christina Applegate
    Christina Applegate is an American actress. She is best known for playing Kelly Bundy on the Fox sitcom Married... with Children. Since then, she has established a film and television career, winning a Primetime Emmy and earning Tony and Golden Globe nominations...
    
    

• The role of Velma Kelly in Chicago
  Chicago (musical)
  Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...
  
  yields two nominations, with one win.
  • 1976 - Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera
    Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
    
    
  • 1997 - Bebe Neuwirth
    Bebe Neuwirth
    Beatrice "Bebe" Neuwirth is an American actress, singer and dancer. She has worked in television and is known for her portrayal of Dr. Lilith Sternin, Dr. Frasier Crane's wife , on both the TV sitcom Cheers , and its spin-off Frasier...
    
     (win)

• The role of Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific
  South Pacific (musical)
  South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...
  
  yields two nominations, with one win as well.
  • 1950 - Mary Martin
    Mary Martin
    Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
    
     (win)
  • 2008 - Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara
    Kelli O'Hara is an American actress, singer, and songwriter.O'Hara has been nominated for three Tony Awards: for her performance as Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza; for her performance as Babe Williams in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of The Pajama Game, where she starred...
    
    

• The role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes
  Anything Goes
  Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...
  
  also yields two nominations, with one win as well.
  • 1988 - Patti LuPone
    Patti LuPone
    Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
    
    
  • 2011 - Sutton Foster
    Sutton Foster
    Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
    
     (win)

• The role of Mother in Ragtime
  Ragtime (musical)
  Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
  
  yields two nominations, though neither had won.
  • 1998 - Marin Mazzie
    Marin Mazzie
    Marin Joy Mazzie is an American actress and singer known for her work in musical theater. She was nominated for the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Olivier Award for her role as Lilli/Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award...
    
    
  • 2010 - Christiane Noll
    Christiane Noll
    Christiane Noll is an American singer and actress known for her work in musicals and on the concert stage. She is perhaps best known for originating the role of Emma Carew in Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde, as well as her roles in Urinetown and City of Angels.-Life and career:Noll was born in New...
    
    

• The role of Dot. Marie in Sunday in the Park with George
  Sunday in the Park with George
  Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...
  
  yields two nominations, though neither had won.
  • 1984 - Bernadette Peters
    Bernadette Peters
    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...
    
    
  • 2008 - Jenna Russell
    Jenna Russell
    Jenna Russell is an English actress and singer. She has appeared on the stage in London in both musicals and dramas, as well as appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company...
    
    

• Mary Martin
  Mary Martin
  Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989...
  
   is the only actress to win an award in this category by portraying a male character. In 1955, she won the Tony for her performance as the title character in Peter Pan. Two other actresses were nominated for playing this same character:
  • 1980 - Sandy Duncan
    Sandy Duncan
    Sandra Kay "Sandy" Duncan is an American singer, dancer and actress of stage and television, recognized through a blonde, pixie cut hairstyle and perky demeanor...
    
    
  • 1991 - Cathy Rigby
    Cathy Rigby
    Cathleen Roxanne Rigby , best known as Cathy Rigby, is a former gymnast, actress and speaker.-Early life:Rigby was born in Los Alamitos, California in 1952....
    
    

• Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   was the first actress to be nominated for a Tony Award by portraying herself. In 2006, she was honored for her performance in Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
  Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life
  Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life is a musical revue based on the life of Chita Rivera, with a book by Terrence McNally and new songs by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens as well as songs from various other composers...
  
  , which offered a retrospective of her career on Broadway. In 2010, Sherie Rene Scott
  Sherie Rene Scott
  Sherie Rene Scott is an American actress, singer and writer. She is a co-founder of Grammy winning Sh-K-Boom Records and Ghostlight Records and has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway musicals and plays appears on numerous solo and original cast recordings.-Life and career:Scott was...
  
   was nominated for playing a semi-fictionalized version of herself in Everyday Rapture
  Everyday Rapture
  Everyday Rapture is a musical with a book written by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan and music by various composers. It ran Off-Broadway in 2009 and opened on Broadway in 2010...
  
  .

• Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   leads the record for most nominations (7), winning twice. Second is Bernadette Peters
  Bernadette Peters
  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...
  
   with 6 nominations, also winning twice.

• Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   and Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
   are tied for having the most nominations in a single decade. Rivera was nominated four times in the 1980s: 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1986. She won in 1984 for her performance in The Rink. Foster was nominated four times in the 2000s: 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2009. She won in 2002 for her performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie
  Thoroughly Modern Millie (musical)
  Thoroughly Modern Millie is a musical with music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by Dick Scanlan, and a book by Richard Morris and Scanlan. Based on the 1967 film of the same name, Thoroughly Modern Millie tells the story of a small-town girl, Millie Dillmount, who comes to New York City to marry for...
  
  .

• Gwen Verdon
  Gwen Verdon
  Gwenyth Evelyn “Gwen” Verdon was an actress and dancer who won four Tony awards for her musical comedy performances. With flaming red hair and an endearing quaver in her voice, Verdon was a critically acclaimed dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 1960s...
  
   is the only one to achieve the honor of two consecutive victories in this category, in 1958 (albeit tied with Thelma Ritter
  Thelma Ritter
  Thelma Ritter was an American supporting and character actress from the 1940s until her death in 1969.-Early life:...
  
  ) and 1959. Other consecutive nominations include: Inga Swenson
  Inga Swenson
  Inga Swenson is an American actress.Inga Swenson was a graduate of Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, Class of 1950...
  
   (1964/1965), Barbara Harris
  Barbara Harris (actress)
  Barbara Harris is an American actress who was a Broadway stage star and later became a film actress. She appeared in such films as A Thousand Clowns, Plaza Suite, Nashville, Family Plot, Freaky Friday, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Grosse Pointe Blank...
  
   (1966/1967), Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera
  Chita Rivera is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award...
  
   (1983/1984) and Sutton Foster
  Sutton Foster
  Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. Foster has received two Tony Awards, in 2002 for her role of Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her role of Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes...
  
   (2005/2006).

• Both Dee Hoty
  Dee Hoty
  Dee Hoty is an American musical theatre actress. Over the course of her career, she has appeared in numerous high-profile Broadway productions and earned multiple Tony nominations for her performances.-Biography:...
  
   and Julie Andrews
  Julie Andrews
  Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
  
   have been nominated three times, but neither has won. They are the category's greatest "losers". Andrews had refused to accept her third nomination, for Victor/Victoria
  Victor/Victoria (musical)
  Victor/Victoria is a musical with a book by Blake Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and additional musical material by Frank Wildhorn...
  
  , feeling that the cast and production crew of the musical had been neglected by the nominating committee.

• The youngest winner in this category is Liza Minnelli
  Liza Minnelli
  Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
  
   - she was 19 when she won for Flora the Red Menace
  Flora the Red Menace
  Flora the Red Menace is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Robert Russell, music by John Kander, and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The musical starred Liza Minnelli in the title role in her Broadway debut, for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical...
  
  in 1965. The oldest winner is Ruth Brown
  Ruth Brown
  Ruth Brown was an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, composer and actress, noted for bringing a pop music style to R&B music in a series of hit songs for Atlantic Records in the 1950s, such as "So Long", "Teardrops from My Eyes" and " He Treats Your Daughter Mean".For these...
  
   who won for Black and Blue
  Black and Blue (musical)
  Black and Blue is a musical revue celebrating the black culture of dance and music in Paris between World War I and World War II.Based on an idea by Mel Howard and conceived by Hector Orezzoli and Claudio Segovia, it consists of songs by artists such as W. C...
  
  in 1989 when she was 61.

External links

• Tony Awards Official Site
• Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical-Internet Broadway Database listing