Jan Maxwell
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| Jan Maxwell | |
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| Born | November 20, 1956 Fargo, North Dakota, United States |
Jan Maxwell (born November 20, 1956), is a Tony Award-nominated American stage and television actress. She is the daughter of former 1st District Judge Ralph B. Maxwell (born November 26, 1919 and served 1967-1978) and a graduate of West Fargo High School, West Fargo, North Dakota where she was an honor student and star in the school's play productions including the leading role as Calamity Jane in Deadwood Dick.
Maxwell made her Broadway debut as an understudy in Cy Coleman – David Zippel musical City of Angels in 1989. She eventually replaced one of the original cast members.
She also appeared in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, which won the Tony Award for Best Play. She replaced original cast member Brid Brennan in the role of Agnes. She also appeared in A Doll's House opposite Janet McTeer; Neil Simon's The Dinner Party opposite John Ritter and Henry Winkler and Sixteen Wounded with Judd Hirsch and Martha Plimpton.
Her Broadway musical debut was in 1998, in the first revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music in which she played Elsa Schraeder.
In 2005, she received a Tony Award nomination, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for the stage production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She played the role of Baroness Bomburst. She won the Drama Desk Award for the same role.
In 2007, she starred in the Broadway production of Coram Boy, for which she received her second Tony Award nomination, for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
In 2006, she starred in Roundabout Theatre Company's Off-Broadway revival of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane. The show made national headlines because of behind-the-scenes friction with co-star Alec Baldwin. Maxwell complained to Roundabout production team about Baldwin's behavior, which included punching a hole in a wall and throwing objects around. [1] [2] The New York Post reported that Maxwell wrote in an email to a friend: "(The) bottom line was my physical safety, mental health and artistic integrity - none of which Roundabout was supporting."
She has made numerous guest appearances, mostly in different roles, in the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order.
Her off-Broadway credits include performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
She is also a voice actress and has done several audio books, including Mary Higgins Clark's Two Little Girls in Blue and No Place Like Home.
In 2006, she reunited with her Sound of Music co-star Richard Chamberlain in Hawaii Opera Theatre's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I in Honolulu, Hawaii.
| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by Isabel Keating for The Boy from Oz |
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical 2004-2005 for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang |
Succeeded by Beth Leavel for The Drowsy Chaperone |
