Julie Halston

Julie Halston, born December 7, 1954, in Flushing, Queens, is an American actress and comedian whose work spans theatre, television, and film. When she was four years old, her family — her father Rudolph "Rudy" Abatelli and her mother Julia Madeline "Dolly" (née Gardner) — relocated to Commack, Long Island. After completing her secondary education at a Catholic high school, Halston earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre arts, cum laude, from Hofstra University. She has appeared on Broadway in productions including The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Women, Hairspray, Gypsy, Twentieth Century, Anything Goes, You Can't Take It With You, On the Town, Tootsie, and Our Town, with her Broadway career spanning 2000 to 2024. Originally from Suffolk County, New York, she received four Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play over the course of her career.

Halston first gained professional recognition in the 1980s through her work in the comedy plays of writer-performer Charles Busch in New York City. She was a founding member of his theatre company, Theatre-in-Limbo, which was part of a broader cultural movement that contributed to the revitalization of Off-Broadway theatre alongside figures including Charles Ludlam, Lypsinka, Ann Magnuson, and John Fleck. Busch regarded Halston as his muse and wrote numerous roles specifically for her, including parts in Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984), The Lady in Question (1989), Red Scare on Sunset (1991), You Should Be So Lucky (1994), The Divine Sister (2011), and The Tribute Artist (2013).

Her Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play came for her performances in Red Scare on Sunset (1991), White Chocolate (2004), The Divine Sister (2011), and You Can't Take It With You (2014). For her portrayal of Gay Wellington in You Can't Take It With You, she also received the Richard Seff Award. In 2011, the Off-Broadway Theatre Alliance designated her a "Legend of Off-Broadway," and she received an Excellence in Theatre Award from the Abington Theatre Company that same year.

In 1992, Halston wrote and performed a solo production entitled Julie Halston's Lifetime of Comedy, which ran Off-Broadway and earned her an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Play. The show led to a CBS network development deal for a pilot called Those Two, which co-starred Harvey Fierstein and was written by Bob Randall, co-producer of Kate and Allie. The pilot was not developed into a series. That same year, Halston married anchorman and entertainment reporter Ralph Howard, who worked for WINS and The Howard Stern Show at Sirius XM until his retirement in 2013. Howard died on August 7, 2018, from complications of pulmonary fibrosis.

In recognition of her advocacy work raising awareness and funding for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, the Tony Awards Administration Committee presented Halston with the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award on September 26, 2021, at the 74th Tony Awards. She has also earned four MAC Awards from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs for her solo comedy performances at the Birdland Jazz Club. In 2008, she co-authored the book Monologues for Show-Offs with writer Donna Daley, published by Heinemann Press, a volume used by casting agents, colleges, and performers as audition material. In May 2020, she and Jim Caruso launched an online talk show titled Virtual Halston, with all 41 episodes available on YouTube.

On television, Halston is best known for her recurring role as socialite Bitsy von Muffling in the HBO comedy series Sex and the City, its film continuation, and the sequel series And Just Like That. Her additional television credits include Gossip Girl, The Good Fight, Divorce, Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes, Difficult People, Law and Order, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, The Electric Company, and The Class. Among her film appearances are Addams Family Values, Small Time Crooks, Celebrity, The Juror, Joe Gould's Secret, Drunks, A Very Serious Person, and I Think I Love My Wife. Her film work also includes the 2021 independent feature The Sixth Reel, in which she co-starred with Charles Busch, and the 2016 short film Hotel Bleu, for which she received recognition on the festival circuit. She won a NYC Web Fest award for Special Guest Star in 2016 for her work on the web series The Mentors.