Liza Minnelli biography

Singer, dancer, stage and screen actress. Born Liza May Minnelli, on March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, to actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. Half-sister of singer-actress Lorna Luft (Garland’s daughter with Sid Luft) and half sister of Joey Luft. Minnelli was less than 3 years old when she made her screen debut in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which co-starred her mother. She became the youngest-ever actress to win a Tony Award, for Flora, the Red Menace (1965), at age nineteen. On television and in live performances, Minnelli’s vocal talents and emotional interpretations of songs earned her valid comparisons with her mother. She is the only singer in history to sell out Carnegie Hall for three weeks straight. Dramatic roles in such films as Charlie Bubbles (1967), The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), and Tell Me that You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) revealed her as a skilled portrayer of social outcasts. She won an Academy Award for Cabaret (1972), and her television special, Liza with a Z (1972), confirmed her many talents. In 1988-89, she substituted for an ailing Dean Martin in a series of live concerts featuring Martin and his fellow Rat Pack cohorts, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. The three men had enjoyed a close friendship with her mother, Judy Garland, and with Minnelli since her birth. Davis was Minnelli’s best man at her wedding to Jack Haley, Jr. Other dramatic appearances included New York, New York (1977) with Robert DiNiro, Stepping Out (1991), the Arthur films with Dudley Moore in the 1980s, and television’s West Side Waltz (1995). She also filled in for Julie Andrews in the Broadway show Victor/Victoria while Andrews took a break in 1997. Although admitting in 1999 that she’s battling substance abuse problems, Minnelli plans to appear on Broadway in the spring of 2000 in a show called Minnelli on Minelli. Minnelli has been married three times, to entertainer Peter Allen (1967-1972), producer Jack Haley, Jr. (1974-1979), and to stage manager/sculptor Mark Gero (1979-1992).

In late October of 2000, Minnelli was hospitalized twice with viral encephalitis. Though she was in very serious condition for a time, she underwent extensive treatment and was released. .