For most actors and actresses, the ultimate goal is to perform on Broadway. Live theater is a different beast than performing in scripted films or TV series, but many performers excel at both. Some began their career on the stage and others have starred on Broadway after garnering critical acclaim in film and TV projects.
Read on for a look at eight renowned performers and their respective debuts on Broadway.
1. Meryl Streep
Regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time, Meryl Streep has won more than 200 acting awards throughout a distinguished career spanning more than four decades. She is a three-time Academy Award winner and has been nominated for an additional 18 Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars. She’s also a nine-time Golden Globe winner and three-time Primetime Emmy Award winner.
Although she’s primarily known for her work in film and TV, Streep began her acting career on Broadway in the 1975 production of Trelawny of the ‘Wells,’ which ran for 47 performances at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Streep starred as Miss Imogen Parrott and earned a Drama Desk Awards nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play.
2. Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald is a renowned actress best known for her work on the stage. She has appeared in film and TV projects like Beauty and the Beast (2017) and the miniseries The Bedford Diaries (2006), but she is more often seen wowing Broadway audiences. She is a six-time Tony Award winner known for performances in Carousel, Master Class, and A Raisin in the Sun. No other performer, male or female, has won more than five competitive Tony Awards. McDonald is also tied with Chita Rivera and Julie Harris for the most Tony Award nominations of all time with 10.
Long before she became one of Broadway’s greatest performers, McDonald got her first break as a replacement in 1992 in The Secret Garden, which opened on April 25, 1991, at St. James Theatre and ran until January 3, 1993.
3. James Earl Jones
Known for his iconic voice, as heard as Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies and the “This is CNN” voiceover, James Earl Jones is an Oscar winner with more than 180 film and TV credits. However, he has also appeared in more than two dozen Broadway plays and musicals, including The Gin Game, Driving Miss Daisy, and Fences.
Six years before he made his screen debut in Dr. Strangelove (1964), Jones debuted on Broadway as Edward in Sunrise at Campobello, which opened at the Cort Theatre on January 30, 1958, and ran until May 30, 1959. Across his career, Jones has earned three Tonys.
4. Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman is another iconic actor known more for his performances on screen (the Oscar winner has more than 140 film and TV credits), but he began his career on Broadway in Hello, Dolly! While the production opened on January 16, 1964, Freeman came in as a replacement in November 1967 for the character of Rudolph, also played by James Beard, Nate Barnett, and Don Forrest. The production ran at St. James Theatre until December 27, 1970.
5. Diane Keaton
Known primarily for her Oscar-winning performance in Annie Hall (1977) and roles in popular movies such as The Godfather (1972), Father of the Bride (1991), and The First Wives Club (1996), Diane Keaton has been acting for more than five decades. However, in 1968, more than a decade before her breakthrough role in Annie Hall, Keaton was an understudy in Hair. The following year, she appeared alongside Annie Hall co-star Woody Allen in the Broadway play Play It Again, Sam. Although Keaton was nominated for a Tony for her performance, she never returned to the stage. She reprised her role in the production of the film version in 1972. She also went on to receive Oscar nominations for Reds (1981), Marvin’s Room (1997), and Something’s Gotta Give (2003).
6. Viola Davis
An Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG, and Tony award winner known for performances in the film version of Fences (2016) and the TV series How to Get Away with Murder, Viola Davis made her stage debut in a 1992 off-Broadway production of As You Like It. Four years later, she appeared on Broadway for the first time in Seven Guitars, a play by August Wilson that was shown at the Walter Kerr Theatre from March 28 to September 8, 1996. In 2010 Davis won the Best Actress in a Play Tony for Fences.
7. Kristen Bell
Before she starred in the TV series Veronica Mars or voiced Anna in the popular Disney film Frozen, Kristen Bell made her Broadway debut in the 2001 production The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at the Minskoff Theatre. Bell also appeared in The Crucible (2002) but hasn’t been on Broadway since.
8. Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Best known as Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family, a popular TV series that ran for 11 seasons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson first appeared on Broadway as Chip in On the Town in 1998. He has since performed in an additional four Broadway productions, including the 2022 revival of Take Me Out, for which he won the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play.