Christine Ebersole

Christine Ebersole is an American actress, singer, and comedian born on February 21, 1953, in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The daughter of Marian Esther (née Goodley) and Robert Ebersole, whose father served as president of a Milwaukee steel company, she is of Swiss-German and Irish descent. Ebersole graduated from New Trier High School in 1971 and went on to study at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, as well as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Over a career spanning film, television, and stage, she has earned two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award, and a Daytime Emmy Award nomination.

Ebersole made her Broadway debut in the play Angel Street in 1975. Her subsequent stage credits include On the Twentieth Century, the 1979 revival of Oklahoma!, in which she played Ado Annie, and the 1980 revival of Camelot. She appeared as Elvira in the 2009 Broadway revival of Noël Coward's farce Blithe Spirit, and following that production she released an album of Coward songs she had encountered while searching for scene-change music during the run. Off-Broadway, her credits include Three Sisters and Talking Heads, and she also appeared in the 2000 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man. In 2005 she played M'Lynn in the Broadway production of Steel Magnolias.

Ebersole won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the 2001 Broadway revival of 42nd Street, in which she portrayed prima donna Dorothy Brock. The following year she appeared in the 2002 Broadway revival of Dinner at Eight as society matron Millicent Jordan, earning a Tony nomination for Featured Actress in a Play. Her second Tony Award came in 2007 for her dual roles in the original musical Grey Gardens, where she played both Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale. The production transferred to Broadway in November 2006 following a sold-out off-Broadway run, and Ebersole remained with the show through its closing in July 2007. Her final Broadway credit to date is War Paint, which opened at the Nederlander Theatre on April 6, 2017, and closed on November 5 of that year. In it she played Elizabeth Arden opposite Patti LuPone as Helena Rubinstein, in a musical with a book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie. The production had premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in June 2016 before moving to New York, and Ebersole received a Tony nomination for the role.

On television, Ebersole first appeared on the soap opera Ryan's Hope, playing a nurse in 1977 and the character Lily Darnell in 1980. She joined Saturday Night Live as a cast member for the 1981–82 season, the first full season under producer Dick Ebersol — a coincidental surname match — serving as co-anchor of Weekend Update alongside Brian Doyle-Murray and performing impersonations that included Mary Travers, Cheryl Tiegs, Barbara Mandrell, Diana Princess of Wales, and Rona Barrett. She subsequently appeared on One Life to Live as the character Maxie McDermott, earning a Daytime Emmy Award nomination, and later as Valerie. Additional television work includes the sitcom The Cavanaughs opposite Barnard Hughes, the short-lived sitcom Rachel Gunn R.N., a 1991 ABC pilot in which she played a single mother named Miss Jones, the 1993 television film adaptation of Gypsy starring Bette Midler, and the 2000 ABC film Mary and Rhoda. She had a recurring role on the TV Land sitcom Retired at 35 in 2011, co-starred on the TBS sitcom Sullivan & Son from 2012 to 2014, appeared as Ms. Newberg on the USA Network series Royal Pains, voiced White Diamond in the animated series Steven Universe from 2018 to 2019, and held a recurring role on the CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola from 2019 to 2024.

Ebersole's film career began with a minor role in the 1982 romantic comedy Tootsie, followed by her portrayal of Caterina Cavalieri in the Academy Award-winning biographical drama Amadeus in 1984. Subsequent film appearances include Mac and Me (1988), Dead Again (1991), Richie Rich (1994), Black Sheep (1996), True Crime (1999), The Big Wedding (2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Licorice Pizza (2021).

In addition to her stage and screen work, Ebersole performs regularly in concerts and cabaret engagements. She won the 2010 Nightlife Award for Outstanding Cabaret Vocalist in a Major Engagement for her 2009 engagement at the Café Carlyle. That same year she performed alongside Michael Feinstein at Feinstein's at Loews Regency in a cabaret program titled Good Friends. In November 2011 she gave two sold-out performances at Birdland in New York City with jazz violinist Aaron Weinstein and his trio. In 2015 she toured a show titled Big Noise from Winnetka, which incorporated the 1938 jazz song of the same name and included a stop in Illinois.

Ebersole was married to actor Peter Bergman from 1976 to 1981. Since 1988 she has been married to Bill Moloney, with whom she has adopted three children. The family resides in Maplewood, New Jersey.