For more than six decades, Bernadette Peters has been one of Broadway's most beloved and enduring leading ladies, a two-time Tony Award winner synonymous with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim. Born Bernadette Lazzara on February 28, 1948, in Ozone Park, Queens, she began performing as a child and made her Broadway debut as a teenager, launching a career that would span stage, film, television, and the concert hall.

Peters became a defining interpreter of Stephen Sondheim's work, originating the roles of Dot and Marie in Sunday in the Park with George (1984) and the Witch in Into the Woods (1987). She won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Song and Dance (1986) and her second for the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, in which she starred as Annie Oakley.