She played Louise in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Benanti then appeared in the stage musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, winning the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played Baroness Elsa Schräder in the 2013 NBC television production of The Sound of Music Live! and in 2015 began playing twin sisters Alura and Astra in the TV series Supergirl. Beginning in 2017, Benanti appears as Edie Randall in the TBS comedy The Detour. Since 2016, she has had a recurring role as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.\n', '

Benanti was born in New York City to Linda Wonneberger, a vocal coach and former actress, and Martin Vidnovic, a Broadway actor and singer. She is of Serbian, German, Irish, and Native American heritage. Her parents divorced when she was young and she moved to Kinnelon, New Jersey with her mother and her stepfather Salvatore Benanti, a psychotherapist, whose name she took and to whom she has referred as her father.\n', '

Benanti remembers being "very serious" and "a bit of an ugly duckling" as a child; she was intensely interested in musical theatre, saying she "came out of the womb as a 40-year-old". She was particularly interested in the music of Stephen Sondheim at an early age and distanced herself from other children. (In 2008, Benanti told The New York Times that she drew on this loneliness in her portrayal of the neglected Louise in Gypsy.) Though her parents refused to let Laura audition for professional theatre, Laura appeared in several high school and community productions, including Evita (as Peron\'s mistress), Follies (as Young Heidi), and Into the Woods (as Cinderella). At 16, Benanti played the title role in her high school production of Hello, Dolly! and won a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Actress in a high school production. She graduated from Kinnelon High School in 1997.\n', '

Return to Laura Benanti Autograph Profile