Neuwirth was born in Newark, New Jersey.[2][1][3] Her father, Lee Neuwirth, was a mathematician who taught at Princeton University and also designed an encryption device while working at the Institute for Defense Analyses.[3] Her mother, Sydney Anne Neuwirth, is a painter who also danced as an amateur for the Princeton Regional Ballet Company.[3] She has an older brother Peter, a mathematician and actuary who graduated from Harvard.[3] In her youth, Neuwirth rebelled against authority, being placed in custody for smoking marijuana when she was 13.[3]
Neuwirth started taking ballet lessons at the age of five, a year after viewing a production of The Nutcracker with her mother.[3] She desired to be a ballet dancer until her early teens, when she realized how restricted her technique was, as well as the standard of ballet education where she lived.[3] Upon viewing the musical Pippin in Manhattan at 13, she changed her future plans from becoming a ballerina to being a Broadway musical dancer.[3] After graduating from Princeton High School in 1976,[4] she attended the Juilliard School for dance and left after only a year, disliking the school for having a "stifling creative environment" and no Broadway-style dance training.[5] Immediately after leaving Juilliard in 1977, she took singing and jazz classes at a New York City-based YWCA,[5] one of them taught by Joan Morton Lucas, who appeared in the film Singin' in the Rain (1952) and the original Broadway production of Kiss Me Kate.[6] She performed with the Princeton Ballet Company in Peter and the Wolf, The Nutcracker, and Coppélia, also appearing in community theater musicals.
Studying acting for two years under Suzanne Shepard,[7] Neuwirth made her Broadway debut in the role of Sheila in A Chorus Line in 1980. She later appeared in revivals of Little Me (1982); Sweet Charity (1986), for which she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical; and Damn Yankees (1994).
1996 saw Neuwirth play Velma Kelly in the Broadway revival of Chicago. She described the difficulty level of the role as "like performing microsurgery from 8 to 10:20."[6] That role brought her her greatest stage recognition to date and several awards including a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Neuwirth would later return to the revival of Chicago in 2006, this time as Roxie Hart.[8] In 2014 she returned again, this time playing "Mama" Morton, making her the first person to play three different characters at three separate times during the course of a single Broadway run.
She appeared in the musical revue Here Lies Jenny which featured songs by Kurt Weill sung and danced by Neuwirth and a four-person supporting cast, as part of an unspoken ambiguous story in an anonymous seedy bar possibly in Berlin in the 1930s. The show ran from May 7 through October 3, 2004, in the Zipper Theater in New York.[9]Here Lies Jenny was also presented by Neuwirth in San Francisco in 2005. In 2009, Neuwirth toured a one-woman cabaret show with pianist Scott Cady. The cabaret included music by Kurt Weill, Stephen Sondheim, Tom Waits, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Kander and Fred Ebb amongst others. In 2010, she returned to Broadway to create the role of Morticia Addams in the original production of The Addams Family opposite Nathan Lane.[8]
While in Los Angeles waiting to receive a Tony for her appearance in Sweet Charity in 1985, Neuwirth auditioned for the role of Dr. Lilith Sternin in the television series Cheers.[12] At the time, Neuwirth was not interested in doing television work and her character was initially planned to be in only one episode of the series.[12] However, the writers enjoyed writing her dialogue so much that she was written into more episodes of the show, eventually making her one of the series' recurring actors.[12]
Neuwirth's character married Frasier Crane. From the fourth to the ninth season, Neuwirth portrayed Lilith in a regular recurring role, and she appeared on the show as a main star for both seasons ten and eleven. Like Kelsey Grammer when he started on the show as Frasier, she was not immediately given star billing in the opening credits but in the end credits for seasons eight and nine, appearing in the opening credits with her own portrait in seasons ten and eleven. She auditioned for the role with her arm in a sling, following a fall a week earlier. She won two Emmy Awards for the role, in 1990 and 1991. The character also made an appearance in the series Wings and in twelve episodes of the Cheers spin-off Frasier, which earned her a 1995 Emmy Award nomination as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. She left Cheers in 1993 to go back to her career in dancing, but would make more television appearances in other shows and commercials.[13]
Neuwirth at the Governor's Ball of the Primetime Emmy Awards on August 25, 1991
She starred as Nadine Tolliver in the 2014 CBS political drama Madam Secretary. In October 2017, Neuwirth announced her decision to leave the series after four seasons. No reason was given.[17] She later reprised the role of Nora Shepherd in Jumanji: The Next Level in 2019; the film grossed 800 million dollars worldwide and received positive reviews from critics.
Personal life
In 1984, Neuwirth married Paul Dorman.[18] She met him in 1982 after she performed a revue at O'Neal's restaurant in New York, where he was bartending.[18] The two divorced in 1991.[18] In 2009, she married director, producer and writer Chris Calkins at The Players club in Manhattan, in a ceremony officiated by actor Peter Coyote.[19]
In a 2004 article in the newspaper J. The Jewish News of Northern California, she was reported as describing herself as Jewish – a "plain Jew" with "no training".[2] In a 2011 interview she said that she was an "atheist" who "believe[d] in unseen and unproved things" such as reincarnation.[6]
Neuwirth has supported and worked for several non-profit charity organizations.[20] Following two hip replacement surgeries,[21][22] and after hearing stories of other dancers facing hip problems, Neuwirth was moved to establish the Dancers’ Resource program at The Actors Fund, which caters to financial and physical needs unique to professional dancers.[20][6] Neuwirth currently serves as vice chair on the board of trustees for The Actors Fund.[23] She has also helped Seeds of Peace.[20]
As an animal lover,[20] she has contributed to the Chatham, New York-based horse rescue group Equine Advocates and the annual pet adoption event Broadway Barks.[24] Neuwirth is particularly fond of cats.[24] In the 1990s, she owned one, Frankie, that she named after architect and writer Frank Lloyd Wright.[18] As of August 2016, she had a black cat, Bobby, a long-haired calico cat, Tallulah, and a mixed Siamese cat, Billie.[24]
In her free time, she enjoys pottery, which she first did in high school.[20]
^ abBloom, Nate (June 25, 2004). "Celebrity Jews: Bebe and Lilith". J. San Francisco Jewish Community Publications. Archived from the original on May 27, 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2008.
^ abcdefgh"Bebe Neuwirth (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved October 21, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
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