Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli, born in 1946, American actor, singer, dancer, and winner of an Academy Award. The daughter of motion-picture 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 summer-stock theater production of The Diary of Anne Frank, and she soon was given roles in road-company musical productions. Minnelli appeared with her mother in a televised performance at the London Palladium in 1964, and she won a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in the musical Flora, the Red Menace (1965). For the next two years Minnelli performed a highly successful nightclub act. She then appeared in motion pictures. Minnelli was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), and she won an Academy Award in 1972 for her work in Cabaret.

During the 1970s Minnelli appeared in several other films—notably Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977)—and headlined her own Broadway shows, winning a Tony Award for The Act in 1977 and an Emmy Award for her television special “Liza with a Z” (1978). A propensity for overwork and a long-standing addiction to alcohol and drugs put her career in jeopardy for a time, but she staged a successful comeback in 1985 with a concert tour and won a Golden Globe Award for acting in the television movie A Time to Live (1985). She also appeared in the movie Arthur (1981) and its sequel, Arthur 2 (1988).