Elizabeth Seal

Elizabeth Seal is a British actress born on 28 August 1933 in Genoa, Italy, whose Broadway career spanned from 1960 to 1983. She is best known for originating the title role in Irma La Douce on Broadway, a performance that earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1961.

Seal entered the profession as a dancer, making her professional debut at age 17 in Ivor Novello's Gay's the Word at the Saville Theatre in 1951. Early stage work included The Glorious Days alongside Anna Neagle in 1953 and the revue Cockles and Champagne in 1954. Her profile rose considerably when she was cast as Gladys in the West End transfer of The Pajama Game, which ran at the London Coliseum in 1955. That performance brought her the Variety Club of Great Britain's Most Promising Newcomer award. She subsequently took over the role of Lola in Damn Yankees from Belita, also at the London Coliseum, earning a second Variety Club award, this time for Best Actress. Between these stage engagements she made her film debut opposite John Mills, Alec McCowen, and Charles Coburn in Town on Trial (1957), playing the role of Fiona, and appeared in Cone of Silence (1960) with George Sanders, Bernard Lee, and Michael Craig.

Her straight theatre debut came when director Peter Hall cast her as Esmeralda in Tennessee Williams' Camino Real, alongside Denholm Elliott, Diana Wynyard, and Harry Andrews. It was her work in Damn Yankees, however, that caught the attention of theatre impresario Binkie Beaumont, who sought a starring vehicle for her and settled on the French musical Irma La Douce, with music by Marguerite Monnot. Directed in London by Peter Brook, the production featured Seal in the title role opposite Keith Michell at the Lyric Theatre. She remained with the show for two years, during which time producer David Merrick saw her perform and waited for her availability before mounting the Broadway production in 1960. Her Broadway debut in that role resulted in the 1961 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Following her Broadway success, Seal appeared in additional American productions including A Shot in the Dark and Exiles by James Joyce, as well as several cabaret engagements, before stepping away from the stage for a number of years to raise a family. She returned to the London stage in 1969 in Beaumont's production of Cat Among the Pigeons, directed by Jacques Charron of the Comédie-Française. A revival of Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds' Salad Days at the Duke of York's Theatre followed. In 1979 she took over the role of Roxie Hart in the original London production of Chicago, appearing alongside Jenny Logan, who played Velma Kelly. Seal returned to Broadway in 1983 to appear opposite Cicely Tyson in a revival of the drama The Corn Is Green, directed by Vivian Matalon.

Away from performing, Seal devoted time to teaching and choreography. She devised and choreographed productions for the Guildford School of Acting and the Central School of Speech and Drama, and choreographed La Traviata for Welsh National Opera. During this period she also completed a master's degree. Following the death of her husband, photographer and former actor Michael Ward, whom she had married in 1976, she returned to the stage in Gay's the Word — the same Ivor Novello musical in which she had made her professional debut — for its first professional revival at the Finborough Theatre, subsequently transferring to the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2013. She has since worked as archivist to Ward's photographic estate and library.

Seal has been married three times. Her first husband was advertising copywriter Peter Townsend. Her second husband was actor, singer, writer, and director Zack Matalon, with whom she had three children: Adam Matalon, a showrunner and creator based in Los Angeles who writes, directs, and produces for television; Sarah Matalon-Levy, a writer, poet, and songwriter based in Paris; and Noah Matalon, a capital projects consultant and property developer based in New York. Through her marriage to Michael Ward she became stepmother to his two daughters, Sam Ward and Tasha Clavel.