LuPone, Patti

LuPone, Patti (b. 1949), actress and singer. The dark, exotic, mannered leading lady of musicals and plays, is one of the theatre's most distinctive players, exuding both a sensual and a chilly, distanced persona in her performances. She was born in Northport, New York, and educated at Juilliard where she later became one of the original members of the Acting Company. LuPone was first widely noticed in 1975 for her backwoods heroine Rosamund in The Robber Bridegroom (1975) and became a Broadway star with her passionate performance as the ambitious Eva Peron in Evita (1979). Among her other outstanding New York roles were the singing evangelist Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes (1987), the temperamental diva Maria Callas in Master Class (1996), and the confused television actress Dotty Otley in Noises Off (2001). Two of her finest performances never made it to New York: the French bride Genevieve in the Broadway‐bound The Baker's Wife (1976) and silent screen star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1993) in London.