Beth Malone

Beth Malone is an American actress and singer born Elizabeth Ann Malone on January 2, 1969, in Auburn, Nebraska. She was raised in Castle Rock, Colorado, the daughter of Bill and Peggy Malone; her mother is a professional country music singer. Malone performed the title role in Annie during middle school and continued in theatre at Douglas County High School. She began her professional career at age 16 at the Country Dinner Playhouse and relocated to New York City at 21. After a period without steady work, she returned to Colorado, based in Aspen, where she built her range by taking on a wide variety of roles and earned her Equity card in a production of Baby. She subsequently moved to Sherman Oaks, California, where she worked in television commercials and performed in productions throughout the Greater Los Angeles area.

Malone's formal training took a nonlinear path. She initially enrolled at Loretto Heights College for musical theatre, but the school closed in 1989 while she was a student, and she chose not to continue her studies at that time because she was finding professional work. She later completed her undergraduate degree through the University of Northern Colorado in 1996 and earned an MFA in Acting from UC Irvine in 2000.

Her Broadway debut came in 2006 in Ring of Fire. She went on to originate the role of Alison Bechdel in the musical Fun Home, developing the character from early workshops through the 2013 off-Broadway production at The Public Theater and into the 2015 Broadway production at the Circle in the Square Theatre, which closed on September 10, 2016. That performance earned Malone a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical in 2015. Her Broadway work continued with the 2018 revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, in which she played the Angel in select performances of both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika during the limited engagement at the Neil Simon Theatre. That production began previews on February 23, opened on March 25, and closed on July 15, 2018.

Beyond Broadway, Malone appeared off-Broadway as Betty Jean in The Marvelous Wonderettes at the Westside Theatre in 2008, the same year she released her debut solo album, Lunch Shift. She had also appeared off-Broadway in Bingo: A Winning New Musical at St. Luke's Theatre in 2005. Her regional credits include the title role in Annie Get Your Gun at the Wells Fargo Pavilion in Sacramento in August 2011 and again at the San Diego Musical Theatre in May 2014, as well as the title role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown at Denver Center Theater Company in September and October 2014 and at The Muny in July 2017. In November 2017, she led an industry reading of The Unsinkable Molly Brown at the Roundabout Theatre Company.

In 2011, Malone created a one-woman cabaret show, Beth Malone: So Far, which she describes as an autobiographical account of her experience as a rural lesbian growing up in Colorado in the 1970s. The production traces her teenage years and young adulthood, including her relationship with her father and the changes that followed when she came out. She toured the show to multiple venues, including the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen in 2011 and the Davenport Theatre in New York City in 2012.

Malone is married to Rochelle Schoppert, a music technician. She is an active participant in LGBTQ advocacy, performing regularly at benefits for LGBTQ groups and nonprofits, and is involved with organizations supporting gender equality, including the Aqua Foundation. During her run in Fun Home, she made a point of speaking with young audience members who were navigating questions of identity.