Annie Golden

Annie Golden is an American actress and singer born on October 19, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York. She sang in school and church choirs as a child and has said she had no formal training. Her father, a Teamster, died at age 52, and her mother died in 1974 at age 42. Golden's Broadway career spans from 1977 to 2022.

Golden's professional path began in music. After meeting Art LaMonica in 1971 and joining his group Lackeys & Schemers, she went on to become the lead singer of the punk band the Shirts, which headlined CBGB in the late 1970s and recorded three albums for Capitol Records: The Shirts (1978), Street Light Shine (1979), and Inner Sleeve (1980). The band was active from 1975 to 1981. In 1984, her song "Hang Up the Phone" appeared on the soundtrack of the film Sixteen Candles. During the early 1990s she performed as part of the duo Golden Carillo with Frank Carillo, releasing three albums: Fire in Newtown (1992), Toxic Emotion (1994), and Back for More (1997). She has also performed solo and with a band in a revue of stage songs and originals called Annie Golden's Velvet Prison, and she returned to performing with the Shirts. On December 31, 2023, she appeared at Phish's New Year's Eve concert, portraying the grandmother of the character Jimmy from the song "Harpua" during a performance of their Gamehendge song cycle.

Golden was discovered by director Miloš Forman while performing with the Shirts, which led to her stage debut as Mother in the 1977 Broadway revival of Hair. She subsequently played Jeannie Ryan in the 1979 film adaptation of the musical. She has appeared in three separate versions of Hair in total: the 1977 Broadway revival, the 1979 motion picture, and a special benefit performance concert in 2004. Her additional Broadway credits include Leader of the Pack (1985), Ah, Wilderness! (1988), On the Town (1998), The Full Monty (2000), Violet (2014), and Xanadu (2007), for which she was a standby for the two comic villain roles. In 2022, she played Cinderella's Mother, Granny, and the Giant's Wife in the Encores! production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which began at New York City Center before transferring to the St. James Theatre on Broadway, opening June 28, 2022, and running through January 8, 2023.

Beyond Broadway, Golden has accumulated significant off-Broadway and regional credits. She played Lucy Schmeeler in the Public Theater's production of On the Town at the Delacorte Theater in August 1997. She played Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in the world premiere of Sondheim and John Weidman's Assassins at Playwrights Horizons in 1990–1991, and is featured on the RCA cast recording of that production. In 2003, she joined original off-Broadway cast members in a Reprise! concert production of Assassins in Los Angeles. She appeared in the lab production of Hit the Lights! at the Vineyard Theatre in 1993 and starred with Peter Scolari in the world premiere of The Nutcracker and I at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, from November 29 to December 31, 2011, playing the Sugar Rush Fairy and three other roles in the musical comedy featuring music by Tchaikovsky and lyrics by Gerard Alessandrini. She also had the title role in the workshop of the short-lived musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie. Since 2005, Golden has frequently appeared in stage concerts for composer Joe Iconis. She starred in the Barrington Stage Company production of his Broadway Bounty Hunter, which opened August 13, 2016, in a role Iconis wrote specifically for her. A concert version of Broadway Bounty Hunter was presented at Joe's Pub on September 26, 2016, and she starred in the show again at the off-Broadway Greenwich House Theater in July 2019.

Golden's film credits include Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Baby Boom (1987), Longtime Companion (1989), Strictly Business (1991), Prelude to a Kiss (1992), 12 Monkeys (1995), The American Astronaut (2001), It Runs in the Family (2003), Adventures of Power (2008), and I Love You Phillip Morris (2009). She also provided the voice of Marina in the Don Bluth animated feature The Pebble and the Penguin. On television, she appeared as the recurring character Tommy in Miami Vice from 1985 to 1986 and portrayed Margaret O'Keefe on Cheers from 1989 to 1992. She has guest-starred on programs including American Playhouse, Dear John, Father Dowling Mysteries, High Maintenance, Law & Order, and True Blue. From 2013 to 2019, Golden portrayed the nearly mute Norma Romano in the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black, a role for which she and the ensemble cast received a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2015.