Lucie Arnaz

Lucie Désirée Arnaz, born July 17, 1951, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, California, is an American actress and singer. The daughter of performers Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, she is the older sister of actor and musician Desi Arnaz Jr. During her childhood, the family relocated to New York City for several years, where Arnaz and her brother attended St. Vincent Ferrer School. She later returned to Los Angeles and enrolled at Immaculate Heart High School, an all-girls Roman Catholic institution she chose primarily for its drama program.

Arnaz began her professional acting career with walk-on appearances on her mother's television series The Lucy Show before taking on a principal role in Here's Lucy, which ran from 1968 to 1974. She played Kim Carter, the daughter of the character portrayed by Lucille Ball. From the mid-1970s onward, she pursued television work independent of her family, appearing in the 1975 NBC telefilm Who Is the Black Dahlia?, in which she played murder victim Elizabeth Short, and in a 1975 Wonderful World of Disney special commemorating the opening of Space Mountain at Walt Disney World, alongside Lyle Waggoner and Tommy Tune. A 1978 episode of Fantasy Island featured her as Toni Elgin. She also appeared over the years in series including Murder, She Wrote, Marcus Welby, M.D., Sons and Daughters, and Law and Order. CBS aired her own short-lived sitcom, The Lucie Arnaz Show, in 1985, and she hosted a late-night-style talk show for one season from 1995 to 1996. In 1993, Arnaz received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Special at the 45th Primetime Emmy Awards for producing the documentary Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, a film about her parents. Her feature film work includes The Jazz Singer (1980), in which she co-starred with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier, a role that earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 38th Golden Globe Awards. She also appeared in the 1982 comedy-drama One More Try opposite her husband, Laurence Luckinbill.

Arnaz's stage career spans several decades and encompasses work on Broadway, in national tours, and in productions abroad. Her regional and touring credits began with the first national company of Seesaw in 1974, followed by Vanities at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1976, where she played the role of Kathy. In June 1978, she took on the title role of Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun at Jones Beach Theatre on Long Island, the first production at that venue following the death of longtime producer Guy Lombardo. She made her Broadway debut in February 1979 in the musical They're Playing Our Song, portraying Sonia Walsk. That performance earned her both the Theatre World Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Subsequent Broadway appearances include Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in which she performed from May 23, 2006, to September 3, 2006, and Pippin, in which she played Berthe, the title character's grandmother, from October 9, 2014, to November 9, 2014. Her Broadway credits also include My One and Only and I Do! I Do!. In 1986, she received the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in the international touring company of My One and Only alongside Tommy Tune. Other notable stage productions include Whose Life Is It Anyway?, The Guardsman at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, in January 1984, The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True at Lincoln Center in 1995, Terence McNally's Master Class at Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from April to May 1999, The Witches of Eastwick at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London in June 2000, Sonia Flew at Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida in April 2006, and Educating Rita at The Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, in 1981. In July 2010, she performed in and directed Babalu: A Celebration of the Music of Desi Arnaz and His Orchestra in Miami, Florida, alongside Raúl Esparza and Valarie Pettiford.

Beyond performing, Arnaz served as a Trustee on the Board of the American Theatre Wing for fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014. From approximately 2002 to 2007, she served as president of the board of directors of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York, a position she resigned following a dispute over the center's future direction. In August 2012, she appeared at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts in Jamestown to support the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy. In October 2008, she participated in a tribute to her mother at the Paley Center for Media in New York City, alongside Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, and donated materials from her family's video collection to the institution. In 2021, Arnaz and her brother Desi Arnaz Jr. served as executive producers of Being the Ricardos, a biopic written and directed by Aaron Sorkin about their parents' professional and personal relationship during the era of I Love Lucy, with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz portrayed by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, respectively.

Arnaz was first married to Philip Vandervort Menegaux from July 17, 1971, to April 1976. On June 22, 1980, she married actor and writer Laurence Luckinbill. Together they have three children: Simon, Joseph, and Katharine Luckinbill. Luckinbill has two additional sons, Nicholas and Benjamin, from a previous marriage. Arnaz and Luckinbill reside in Palm Springs, California.