Beth Leavel

Beth Leavel, born November 1, 1955, in Raleigh, North Carolina, is an American stage actress and singer whose Broadway career spans from 1980 to 2025. She attended Needham B. Broughton High School and Meredith College, where she earned a degree in social work. Her formal theatre training culminated in a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1980, during which time she performed in college productions including Cabaret and Hello, Dolly!

Leavel made her Broadway debut that same year, 1980, as a replacement for Annie Reilly in 42nd Street. More than a decade later, she joined the original Broadway cast of Crazy for You (1992), playing Tess Parker and understudying the role of Polly Baker. She returned to Broadway in 1999 as Mabel and Mrs. Lydia Bixby in The Civil War, and in 2001 came back to 42nd Street in its Broadway revival, serving as a standby for the roles of Maggie Jones and Dorothy Brock, eventually taking on the latter.

The defining credit of her career came with The Drowsy Chaperone, in which she originated the starring role of Beatrice Stockwell. Leavel contributed to developing the character's backstory, describing Stockwell as a composite of many women in theatre. The performance earned her both the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, both presented in 2006 at the 60th Tony Awards ceremony.

Following The Drowsy Chaperone, Leavel succeeded Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein on July 15, 2008, remaining with the production until it closed on January 4, 2009. She then starred in the world premiere of Minsky's at the Center Theatre in the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, which ran from January 21 through March 1, 2009, alongside her former Young Frankenstein castmates Christopher Fitzgerald and Sarrah Strimel. Later that year, on September 22, 2009, she succeeded Carolee Carmello as Donna Sheridan in the Broadway production of Mamma Mia!, a role she held until October 10, 2010.

Leavel starred as Emily Hobbs in Elf the Musical, which opened November 14, 2010, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre and ran through January 2, 2011. She followed that engagement with Baby It's You!, which began Broadway previews on March 26, 2011, and closed September 4, 2011. Her portrayal of Florence Greenberg in that production earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical at the 65th Tony Awards.

In January and February 2012, she starred in a limited run of Boeing-Boeing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. In November 2013, she appeared Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays. In 2014, she starred in the world premiere of Dog and Pony at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. That same year she participated in the workshop and reading process for Something Rotten!, cast as Bea, but was replaced by Heidi Blickenstaff before the show's Broadway opening in March 2015, after the writers determined the character needed to be younger to accommodate a key plot point involving pregnancy.

Leavel starred in The Prom, which opened on Broadway in November 2018, earning her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical at the 73rd Tony Awards. In 2022, she played Miranda Priestly in the Chicago world premiere of The Devil Wears Prada. She also appeared in the Broadway production of Bandstand and in Lempicka. In 2025, she joined Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga in the Broadway mounting of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, following a run at Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group from February 8 through March 9, 2025.

Leavel is married to actor Adam Heller.