About
Betty Buckley
An actress and singer whose career spans Broadway, film, television and concert halls around the world, from Grizabella in Cats to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
Tony Award
Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats
2012
Inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame
2 Grammy
nominations, including Stars and the Moon
Olivier
nomination for Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard
Stage
Betty Buckley is a 2012 Theatre Hall of Fame inductee and the 2017 recipient of the Julie Harris Award from The Actors Fund for Artistic Achievement. In 2023 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from The American Songbook Association.
She won a Tony Award for her performance as Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, and received her second Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical as Hesione in Triumph of Love. She received an Olivier Award nomination for her interpretation of Norma Desmond in the London production of Sunset Boulevard, a role she repeated on Broadway. In London she starred in Promises, Promises (Evening Standard Award nomination) and the 2013 British premiere of Dear World.
Her other Broadway credits include 1776, Pippin, Song and Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Carrie. She headlined the first national tour of the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! in 2018–2019.
Off-Broadway, she starred in the world premiere of Horton Foote’s The Old Friends (Drama Desk nomination, 2014), White Lies, Lincoln Center’s Elegies, the original New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Eros Trilogy, Juno’s Swans and Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road.
Regional credits include The Perfectionist, Gypsy, The Threepenny Opera, Camino Real, Buffalo Gal, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Old Friends at Houston’s Alley Theatre, and Grey Gardens at Bay Street Theatre and the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles (Ovation Award nomination, 2016).
Film
Ms. Buckley appears in By Design, written and directed by Amanda Kramer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025, and in A24’s Eternity with Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen. In 2024 she co-starred in Imaginary for Blumhouse and Lionsgate. She co-starred with James McAvoy in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, one of 2017’s top international box office hits, earning a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Her other films include her debut in Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies, Roman Polanski’s Frantic, Woody Allen’s Another Woman, Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening.
The Mayfly, an animated short written, produced and narrated by Ms. Buckley, won Best of Festival, Best Director and Best 2D Character Based Animation at the Los Angeles Animation Festival, and Best Animation at the Lady Filmmakers Festival. A love letter to New York City and music, it was inspired by a true event at the Café Carlyle.
Television
She has had a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU and co-starred in the third season of AMC’s Preacher. Her numerous guest-starring roles on television include The Cleaning Lady, Supergirl, Chicago Med and Pretty Little Liars. For HBO, she appeared on Getting On, The Leftovers and The Pacific, and had a recurring role on Oz for three seasons. She starred as Abby Bradford in Eight Is Enough, appeared twice on The Kennedy Center Honors, and earned two Daytime Emmy nominations for Taking a Stand.
Recordings & concerts
Betty has recorded 20 albums, including Ghostlight (2014), produced by T Bone Burnett, Story Songs (2017), Hope (2018), the 2022 compilation Betty Buckley Sings Stephen Sondheim, and the 2026 live album Enough. She received Grammy nominations for Stars and the Moon: Live at the Donmar and for the audiobook The Diaries of Adam and Eve.
She tours in concert worldwide with her ensemble, and in 2015 was featured in the Royal Albert Hall concert of Follies celebrating Stephen Sondheim’s 85th birthday.
Teaching
For more than fifty years, Ms. Buckley has taught scene study and song interpretation in Manhattan and at universities and conservatories around the country. She is an Artist in Residence at Mercyhurst University and teaches regularly at the T. Schreiber Studio in New York City.
Honors
Texas Medal of Arts Award for Theater (2009); Texas Film Hall of Fame (2007); the Stephen Bruton Award from the Lone Star Film Festival (2015); the Sarah Siddons Award (2018). She holds honorary doctorates from The Boston Conservatory and Marymount College, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the New England Theatre Conference, the Shubert Theatre in New Haven and the Terry Schreiber Studio.