Biography
One of the rare talents to emerge from Broadway and become famous on film and television, Idina Menzel built a career off of her striking, elastic, mezzo-soprano voice. You may know her as a modern bohemian, a wicked witch, a Disney princess, or even as "Adele Dazeem," especially if you happen to be John Travolta, but the point is, you know her. She's the type of star they really don't make anymore, a stage to screen success story, a tale as old as time. Born on May 30, 1971 in New York, NY, Menzel grew up in Syosset, on Long Island. She began her performing career at the age of 15, shortly after her parents divorced, singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs. This is how she supported herself through NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where she graduated with a BFA in Drama in 1992. After a few years of bit parts, Menzel auditioned for her first professional theater job, a new musical based on "La Bohemme" that was set to open on Broadway that winter. "Rent" saw Menzel playing the role of Maureen Johnson, the fiery ex-girlfriend of main character Mark Cohen, who now identified as a lesbian. The show was a smash hit, and Menzel was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. As an added bonus, it was during this production that she met her future husband, fellow cast member Taye Diggs. Following her final performance in the original run of "Rent" on July 1, 1997, Menzel decided to focus on music. The following year, she released her debut album, Still I Can't Be Still (Hollywood Records, 1998), and spent the summer on the Lilith Fair tour. More theater work soon followed, with appearances in productions of "Summer of '42," "Hair," "Aida," "The Wild Party," and "The Vagina Monologues," amongst others. In 2003, the same year she and Diggs were married, Menzel took on her biggest role yet, co-starring with Kristin Chenoweth in another smash hit musical, "Wicked." For her role as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, Menzel won a Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, and eventually followed the show to London's Apollo Victoria Theater for a run in the West End, for which she earned a record-setting $30,000 per week. In 2005, Menzel made her film debut, reprising the role of Maureen Johnson in Chris Columbus's splashy film adaptation of "Rent" (2005). Though Menzel continued to act and release music throughout the next few years, she was also focused on family: she and Diggs's son, Walker Nathaniel Diggs, was born in 2009, but sadly their marriage ended in divorce in 2013. That same year, Menzel turned in yet another Tony-nominated performance in the musical "If/Then," and set off a genuine cultural zeitgeist thanks to her appearance in the Disney animated film "Frozen" (2013). Loosely based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, Menzel voiced Elsa, a princess who has trapped her kingdom in eternal winter. Most importantly, she got to sing the film's show stopping musical number, "Let It Go." The film was praised by critics, broke box office records, and eventually won two Academy Awards, for Best Animated Film, and Best Original Song for "Let It Go." Menzel would reprise the role for an equally successful sequel, "Frozen II" (2019), while also that same year show a totally unseen side of herself by taking on the role of Dinah Rather, the long-suffering wife of Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a Diamond District jeweler and degenerate gambling addict, in the Safdie Brothers' acclaimed, gritty crime drama "Uncut Gems" (2019).
