Who

Peters is one of Broadway's most prolific talents, loved by the public for her roles in Gypsy and Annie Get Your Gun.

Backstory

Born in Queens, Bernadette Lazzara didn't waste any time becoming a star. At age three, she was on the show Juvenile Jury (in which toddlers would suggest solutions to problems mailed in by viewers); at the age of 11, she'd already made her way to Broadway. By the 1960s, Peter was earning top billing on the Great White Way, with roles in musicals like George M! and Leonard Bernstein's On the Town. She turned to film in the 1970s and made her debut in the 1973 stinker Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies. She had much better luck a few years later when she starred in 1979's The Jerk alongside Steve Martin. A handful of other movies followed, including Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, 1982's Annie, and Pennies from Heaven (which brought her back together with Steve Martin and earned her a Golden Globe). But she soon refocused her attention on the stage, making a much-trumpeted Broadway homecoming in the '80s with performances in a succession of hit musicals, including Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance, and Sondheim-Lapine's Into the Woods.

Of note

Although Peters has acted for decades on the stage and screen (both big and small), Broadway has always been closest to her heart, and it's where she's spent most of her time in recent years. She's still basking in glory from her turn in the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun; one critic drooled at the time that Peters "both sparkles and glows" in the titular role. And in 2003, she played the iconic stage mother from hell, Mama Rose, in Sam Mendes' well-received revival of Gypsy. But she's still found time for a number of TV appearances in recent years, memorably popping up on Ally McBeal, Frasier, Law & Order and Boston Legal, where she played a pervy judge. She also has a successful career as a recording artist, putting out six solo albums between 1980 and 2005, most of which focused on songs she made famous in musicals like Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George.

Trophy case

Peters was nominated for three Tonys before she finally won for 1985's Song and Dance. She won a second Tony for 1999's Annie Get Your Gun. Sadly, she did not win in 1977 when she was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance on The Muppet Show, when she tried to teach some Broadway choreography to a group of Muppets.

Pet Cause

Peters is a staunch animal rights advocate: With actress and pal Mary Tyler Moore, she founded Broadway Barks, an annual animal adoption event focused on promoting placement of pets from shelters and on making New York a no-kill city. Peters' own dogs are named Stella and Kramer.

Personal

She briefly dated frequent co-star Steve Martin in the late 1970s. In 1996, she married investment advisor Michael Wittenberg in a ceremony hosted by Mary Tyler Moore; Wittenberg was killed in a helicopter crash in Montenegro in 2005. Peters lives on West End Avenue, in the same building as New Yorker scribe Jeffrey Toobin and PR agency chief Richard Edelman. She also has a home in LA.

True story

She became so notorious for missing performances of Gypsy due to illness that New York Post critic Michael Riedel ran a Photoshopped picture of her face on a milk carton.