Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli (1946- ), American actress, singer, dancer, and Academy Award (Oscar) winner. The daughter of film star Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli, she was born in Hollywood, California. Her career began in 1961 when she landed the leading role in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. She was soon given roles in road-company musical productions; she also appeared with her mother in a televised performance at the London Palladium in 1964 and won a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in the musical Flora, the Red Menace (1965). For the next two years she performed a highly successful nightclub act. She then branched out into films, receiving an Academy Award nomination for her moving performance in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), and winning an Academy Award in 1972 for her most memorable work, as Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

During the 1970s, a long-standing addiction to alcohol and drugs put Minelli’s career in jeopardy for a time. She staged a successful comeback, however, in 1985 with a concert tour, and won a Golden Globe Award for her part in the television film A Time to Live. She also appeared in the films Arthur (1981), its sequel, Arthur 2 (1988), and Stepping Out (1991).

At her best Minnelli conveys emotional intensity, intelligence, humour, and vulnerability, as can be seen in the television film West Side Waltz (1995), co-starring Shirley Maclaine and Jennifer Grey, about the bonds of friendship that unite three very different women.