Kristin Chenoweth

With her distinctive high-pitched vocals and energetic performance style, Kristin Chenoweth secured Tony Award recognition for playing Sally in the 1999 Broadway revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown as well as for originating the role of Glinda in Wicked on Broadway in 2003. In her parallel career as a solo recording artist, she first appeared with the standards album Let Yourself Go in 2001 and reached the Billboard 200 for the initial time via the 2008 holiday collection A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas. Across the same period she assembled an acting résumé that featured her own sitcom Kristin from 2001, guest and recurring parts on The West Wing, Glee, and Pushing Daisies—the last earning her an Emmy—plus screen roles in Bewitched (2005) and Hit & Run (2012). She further appeared as the Chaplin-esque Ms. Noodle in Sesame Street’s “Elmo’s World” segments. A 2016 collection of Great American Songbook material titled The Art of Elegance, drawing on works by the Gershwins, Hoagy Carmichael, Bacharach and David, and additional composers, carried her to number one on the Billboard jazz chart, while the 2021 holiday album Happiness Is...Christmas! supplied another chart success in that genre.

Kristi Dawn Chenoweth was raised in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and completed both a bachelor’s degree in musical theater (1990) and a master’s degree in opera performance (1992) at nearby Oklahoma City University. She also received the Most Talented Up-and-Coming Singer award during the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, an honor that granted a full scholarship to the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia. Before enrolling, however, she auditioned successfully for an off-Broadway staging of Dames at Sea, accepted the role, and moved to New York to begin her professional career. Subsequent early credits included a run in the long-running off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks, leading parts at such noted regional houses as the Goodspeed Opera House and the Guthrie Theater, and an engagement as Jerome Robbins’ guest soloist in his West Side Story Suite of Dances at the New York City Ballet.

Chenoweth reached Broadway for the first time in 1997 in the John Kander–Fred Ebb musical Steel Pier, an appearance that brought her a Theatre World Award. Her portrayal of Sally Brown in the 1999 revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown earned the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical along with Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle honors. During the 1999–2000 season she performed in the Broadway comedy Epic Proportions, starred in an ABC television version of the musical Annie, and headlined the City Center Encores! production of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever in February 2000.

Sony Classical issued her debut solo album, Let Yourself Go, on May 29, 2001. Several months afterward her NBC sitcom Kristin premiered, extending her visibility across multiple entertainment platforms. On the loosely autobiographical series Chenoweth portrayed Kristin Yancey, an Oklahoma transplant attempting to break into show business in New York (though the character ultimately took an office job, unlike the performer herself). That summer she launched her first national tour with the Seattle Men’s Chorus yet soon returned to Broadway after being cast as Glinda opposite Idina Menzel’s Elphaba in the Wizard of Oz–inspired musical Wicked. The production opened in October 2003, achieved lasting commercial success—eventually surpassing Les Misérables to become Broadway’s fifth-longest-running show in 2019—and received nine Tony nominations, though Chenoweth lost the Best Actress in a Musical prize to her co-star.

A recurring role on the acclaimed drama The West Wing arrived in 2004, while her recording catalog grew with the 2005 release As I Am and the holiday set A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas, the latter marking her Billboard 200 debut at the end of 2008. In the interval between those projects she appeared in the films Running with Scissors and Four Christmases and took the part of Olive Snook on the comedy-drama Pushing Daisies, winning the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2009. By 2010 she had accepted another Broadway assignment in the revival of Promises, Promises and begun a series of guest appearances on Glee. The 2011 country-inflected album Some Lessons Learned, which celebrated her Oklahoma roots, entered Billboard’s country albums chart at number 14.

She revisited the stage for the 2014 live recording Coming Home, captured in her hometown of Broken Arrow. The following year she returned to Broadway alongside Peter Gallagher in a revival of On the Twentieth Century, earning a further Tony nomination plus Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. The 2016 Great American Songbook project The Art of Elegance climbed to a career-best number 36 on the Billboard 200 and held the top position on the Jazz Albums chart for three weeks.

In November 2016 Chenoweth presented the limited-run, self-written Broadway revue My Love Letter to Broadway, after which she took on television and film roles in Hairspray Live!, the Eric Stoltz–directed Class Rank, and NBC’s Trial & Error. On the 2019 album For the Girls she focused on mainstream pop songs originally associated with female artists and included guest contributions from Dolly Parton, Ariana Grande, Jennifer Hudson, and Reba McEntire. Mid-2021 brought a part in the Golden Age musical parody Schmigadoon!, and that October her eighth studio album, Happiness Is...Christmas!, secured her second Top 20 placement on the Billboard Holiday Albums chart.