Bio Full Biography »

Actress/singer Elaine Stritch has had a long career in the theater, in films, and on television. She gained her greatest prominence as a stage performer, alternating leading roles in straight plays and musicals in New York, London, and on tour. Before the camera, she tended to be cast in supporting roles, and in addition to a series of movies she was also a regular on several television series and a frequent guest star, one of those performances winning her an Emmy Award. At the start of the 21st century, she gathered up her personal and professional experiences and recounted them in a one-woman show, Elaine Stritch: At Liberty, that finally won her a Tony Award. Stritch grew up in Michigan, given a strict Catholic upbringing that included attendance at a convent school. But she became interested in acting early on and moved to New York in her teens to study drama at the New School for Social Research. She began getting parts in plays in 1944 and made her Broadway debut in the musical...