Tovah Feldshuh
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Tovah Feldshuh (born Terri Sue Feldshuh on December 27, 1952) is an American actress, singer, and playwright.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Feldshuh was born in New York City, New York to a Jewish family; her brother, David Feldshuh, is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright and wrote Miss Evers' Boys. She grew up in a wealthy family in Westchester County, New York. Before she went into acting she was a rock singer.
Feldshuh is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the winner of the McKnight Fellowship in Acting to the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, where she started her career under British director Michael Langham.[1]
[edit] Career
Feldshuh first appeared on the stage under the name of Terri Fairchild and later adopted the name Tovah, which is her Hebrew name. She has had parallel careers on stage, film and television, earning Tony and Emmy nominations and numerous other awards for her work. Famous for her flaming red hair, she first appeared on Broadway in "Cyrano" starring Christopher Plummer. [2] This was followed by numerous Broadway roles. She has been nominated for the Tony Award four times:
- Best Actress (Play) in 1976 for Yentl
- Best Actress (Musical) in 1979 for Sarava
- Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) in 1989 for Lend Me a Tenor
- Best Actress (Play) in 2004 for Golda's Balcony. [3]
The latter play, William Gibson's work about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, set a record as the longest-running one-woman play in Broadway history on January 2, 2005. [4]
Feldshuh made her cabaret debut at the Algonquin Hotel Oak Room in her act, Tovah: Crossovah! From Broadway to Cabaret, which was followed by an one-woman show Tovah: Out of Her Mind! (1996). In April 1999, the play opened at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia and she took it on the road to such cities as Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong, and Sydney, Australia. Her London West End debut of Tovah: Out of Her Mind! sold out an eight-week run at the Duke of York's Theatre. The Boston Globe selected her as "Best Cabaret Artist of 2000". [5]
In 1973 Feldshuh appeared on television in a minor role in the Movie of the Week Scream, Pretty Peggy and later as Katharine Hepburn in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), but she came to international prominence as Helena Slomova in the 1978 mini series Holocaust. Following this standout exposure (for which she received an Emmy nomination), she has continued to make numerous other television movies and series appearances.
She has a recurring role as defense attorney Danielle Melnick on Law & Order for which she received her second Emmy nomination in 2003. Feature film appearances have included A Walk on the Moon, Happy Accidents, Brewster's Millions, The Idolmaker, The Blue Iguana, A Day in October, and The Believer.
She played Judy Stein, the mother of the leading lady, in Kissing Jessica Stein for which she won the Golden Satellite Award as Best Supporting Actress in 2003. [6]
As a playwright she is perhaps best known for her one-woman show Tallulah Hallelulah (about the actress Tallulah Bankhead) in which she stars.
In 2006, she starred in a romantic comedy film Just My Luck with Lindsay Lohan and Chris Pine.
[edit] Personal life
Feldshuh married New York attorney Andrew Harris Levy in 1977. They have two children. For her charity work, she is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award, Hadassah's Myrtle Wreath, and the Israel Peace Medal. The National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored her with the 2002 Jewish Image Award.
