- Mary Beth Peil
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Mary Beth Peil Born June 25, 1940
Davenport, Iowa, United StatesMary Beth Peil (born June 25, 1940) is an American actress and singer.
Contents
Early life
Born in Davenport, Iowa in 1940, Peil (pronounced "peel") trained as an opera singer at Northwestern University under Lotte Lehmann. There she became a member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. In 1964 she won both the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
Career
During the 1960s, Peil toured with Boris Goldovsky's opera company and the Metropolitan Opera's national company singing such roles as Susanna in Mozart and da Ponte's The Marriage of Figaro. She also sang with the New York City Opera.
In 1971, she originated the role of Alma in the opera Summer and Smoke, based on a Tennessee Williams play, and performed it again when it was broadcast on television in 1982 (based on a 1980 performance).[1]
Peil was persuaded to take a role in Kiss Me, Kate and soon found herself on Broadway. In May 1983 she was cast in a national tour as the twelfth and final Anna Leonowens opposite Yul Brynner's monarch of Siam in a revival of The King and I. The production toured the United States, closing on Broadway shortly before Brynner's death in 1985. Peil was nominated for a 1985 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.[2][3] She starred in the 1987 Off-Broadway musical Birds of Paradise.
She made her film debut in 1992's Jersey Girl. She appeared on TV's Law & Order in 1994. Peil won an Obie Award in 1995 for her work in three non-musical plays, The Naked Truth,[4] Missing Persons, and A Cheever Evening.[3][5]
In 1996 and 1997, Peil toured in A. R. Gurney's play, Sylvia with Charles Kimbrough and Stephanie Zimbalist. She played evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in a 1998 off-Broadway revival of the Irving Berlin - Moss Hart revue As Thousands Cheer.[6]
Between 1998 and 2003, Peil was introduced to a wider audience through her role as Evelyn 'Grams' Ryan on teen television drama Dawson's Creek. Alongside the four main young stars of that show, she was the only actress to appear as a credited regular throughout the show's six-season run, appearing in 74 of 128 episodes.
In May 1999, Peil appeared in the Yale Repertory Theatre's production of the Noel Coward play Hay Fever. She played the beggar woman in Sweeney Todd at the Kennedy Center in 2002 and in the spring of 2003 she played the mother of Antonio Banderas's character in a Broadway revival of the musical Nine. In the winter of 2003, she again appeared off-Broadway, starring in Frame 312, Keith Reddin's play about the Kennedy assassination.[7] In 2008 she appeared as the Old Lady and Blair Daniels in the Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sunday in the Park with George.
Peil portrayed Nancy Reagan's mother, actress Edith Luckett, in the Showtime movie The Reagans (2003). She also appeared in the thriller Mirrors (2008), filmed in Romania. As of 2009 she is playing "Jackie Florrick", the mother of Chris Noth's character, on the CBS drama The Good Wife.
Starting in October 2010 she appeared in the original Broadway cast of the Lincoln Center Theater production of the musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which is based upon the movie of the same name.[8] The show had a limited run until January 2011. Peil appears in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" on Broadway in the role of Solange LaFitte, alongside Bernadette Peters and Elaine Paige, starting in August 2011.[9] [10]
References
- ^ O'Connor, John J."TV: 'Summer And Smoke,' An Opera The New York Times, June 23, 1982
- ^ Mary Beth Peil - Awards and Nominations at Internet Broadway Database
- ^ a b Entertainment Awards Database at L.A. Times
- ^ Dyer, Richard (June 1996). "The Bold Soprano: After Leaving Opera For Stage, Mary Beth Peil Gets 'Naked'". Boston Globe.
- ^ 1995 Obie Awards at VillageVoice.com
- ^ As Thousands Cheer at Internet Off-Broadway Database
- ^ Frame 312 at Internet Off-Broadway Database
- ^ Hetrick, Adam."Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott Cast in Broadway's "Women on the Verge'" Playbill.com, July 26, 2010
- ^ Gans, Andrew."DIVA TALK: Chatting with 'Follies' Star Mary Beth Peil" Playbill.com, September 2, 2011
- ^ Gans, Andrew."The Right Girls: Kennedy Center 'Follies', With Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, Elaine Paige, Begins Broadway Previews" Playbill.com, August 7, 2011
External links
- Mary Beth Peil at the Internet Movie Database
- Mary Beth Peil at the Internet Broadway Database
- Mary Beth Peil at Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Biography from American Repertory Theater with photo
- Photos from Summer and Smoke
Categories:- 1940 births
- Living people
- American television actors
- American female singers
- American film actors
- American musical theatre actors
- American opera singers
- American stage actors
- American sopranos
- Actors from Iowa
- Operatic sopranos
- Bienen School of Music alumni
- People from Davenport, Iowa
- Winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
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