Interview with Patti LuPone
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Patti LuPone
American actress and singer who won Tony Awards for Evita and Gypsy and originated Fantine in the London production of Les Misérables.
Source: Q with Tom Power on YouTube
These answers are taken from Broadway legend Patti LuPone reflects on her decades-long love affair with the stage on Q with Tom Power's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with singing?
I was really young. I started tap dancing at four years old, and I fell in love with the audience and I never looked back.
My mother, when I was I think three or four years old, would have me do Marilyn Monroe imitations. Go figure where that came from. I have no idea. I remember I used to drop a shirt off my shoulder and do fish things with my lips, and that was the Marilyn Monroe imitation. So I discovered that I was free, basically, when I was four years old.
When did you start singing?
I grew up in a town where music education was an integral part of our education, as important as science and math, from elementary school through high school. So if I didn't start singing before, I started singing in kindergarten.
I can remember being on stage in the third grade in the Ocean Avenue Elementary School while Heather White played Katisha and I was her understudy, going, 'She's never going to be in show business. Why is she playing it? I should be playing it.' I remember where I was on the stage. I was on stage right.
What drew you to a career as a singer?
Basically it chose me, and in choosing me it opened up every possible door. I wasn't intimidated to sing or act crazy or make people laugh or dance, because it chose me. It just opened up the doors.
Once it chooses you, once you understand that this is a creative freedom, nothing is off limits. It's just not.
I can't do math. That's why I'm an actress. I always say I can't do math, that's why I got into the arts.
What do you enjoy most about singing?
[Singing Don't Cry for Me Argentina is] great, because people want me to sing it. There's something about that song that touches people, whether they've seen the show or not. They know that song, and there's something in that song that Andrew wrote that really moves people. I know people want me to sing it, and so I am very happy to sing it for them. It never gets old, because the audience wants it, so there's no way it could get old.
I look at the audience every night when I'm singing it, and you see a look on their faces, and it's not me, it's the song. I had people come backstage that were Peronista and anti-Peronista who said I had her to a tee, because what they saw was Eva Perón, not me. They saw what they wanted to see.
What was a great moment for you as a singer?
Before I gave up musicals, I saw Marianne Elliott's War Horse at Lincoln Center Theater and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in London, and I put it out to the universe that I wanted to work with this woman. Now I have to leave War Paint and have a hip replacement, and she calls, and I said, 'No, no, no.' And then I remembered what I had put out in the universe, and I thought, if I don't say yes, she'll never ask me again, and this is the woman I wanted to work with.
I am so glad I did. She's an extraordinary visionary. She is a nurturer in the room. It's an incredibly safe space for all of us, so it makes it incredibly creative, because we're allowed to fail. She's just brilliant, and I have a friendship with her now.
How did your career as a singer unfold?
Had I been asked to originate a role earlier in my career, I might have been intimidated. I might have just gone ahead with what they wanted me to do. But I was brought into this by Cameron Mackintosh. I was doing Oliver! on Broadway, and Cameron produced that as well. I was playing Nancy, in that Victorian costume, and Cameron saw me and said, 'There's a role for you in the next thing I'm doing.' I said, 'When? Where?' He said, 'London, nine months from now.' They couldn't find a Fantine, so he came back to me and said, 'Will you come?'
I heard the first four bars of the French recording and I knew it was a hit. Four bars, I knew it was a hit, and I said yes. So now they've brought me in. I'm the only American, the only one with a musical theater pedigree, because it was really Royal Shakespeare Company actors that were doing the roles in a musical. I'm the only one that has a Tony Award.
What advice do you have for new singers?
I would say study the craft. Continue to study, to know the history of what you're doing and to know everything about it. And also physically study everything, because there's so much talent out there right now in s***ty productions. I see so much bad theater, but I look at the stage going, oh my God, the talent on that stage. There's triple and quadruple threats out there and they're fantastic.
So going into this business, you have to be prepared. You have to be really prepared. If I was starting out now, I wouldn't make it. I don't think so. The talent is extraordinary. It's inspiring. It's so wonderful to see.
Think about a demanding director, producer or music director. What made them difficult, and how did you work with them successfully?
[Stephen Sondheim] was controversial. He was capricious. He could be very mean. He could be very loving. But I think ultimately what he was was deeply, deeply emotional and deeply, deeply in love with musical theater, with people. I think he was insecure. He was very, very human.
The first time I actually auditioned for him, it was for the replacement of Dot in Sunday in the Park, and he came downstage and said, 'I don't want any belting.' I haven't even opened my mouth, and I was already intimidated. I did not get the part. The first time I worked with him, he was very complimentary and helpful, but then there was one time I worked with him where he was yelling at me, and I said that if anybody had any less experience than me they would turn in their Equity cards, because it was that brutal.
There is a school of thought among certain creators in New York that you have to humiliate and destroy a person to get a performance out of them. It's not the case. I've gone through several of them, because I was coming of age in musicals when they were alive and creating, and they were cruel. But it made me stronger.
How do you keep communication clear with directors, music directors and the people you perform with?
What I learned [on Les Misérables] was how the British actors talk to their directors. We American actors don't know how to communicate what we need, what we want, what we think the character is, to our directors. I watched Roger Allam argue a point with Trevor Nunn, very specific, and I was so impressed with that. I saw a dialogue between an actor on the stage and a director in the audience, and the actor had more control, because we actually have more control. We're the ones on the stage facing the audience.
So when I was doing Fantine, I was the one that put in a run. It was a held note and the orchestra moved, and I said to Claude-Michel, 'Why am I holding the note and the orchestra is moving? I should move with the orchestra.' I put that in. I also put in the sitting on the floor, until I didn't like it anymore and I stood up, and Trevor said, 'Why did you stand up?' And I went, 'Because it lost its momentum sitting down.'
Describe your style.
I've always said that I am scared to death in my life but fearless on stage. People see me in a public environment. They don't see me at home, cowering because it's dark.
In the concerts, I am me, and that took a lot of learning. I think I learned more in cabaret than I ever learned at Juilliard, because you are presenting your persona to an audience without a mask. In theater or in film, we're playing characters, so we are basically hiding behind a mask. When I was doing Evita, I did this cabaret act on Saturday nights for 27 weeks. It was a very small environment and the audience was on top of me, and it was a question of really look them in the eye, tell them the story in the song.
I'm not two different people. I just have two different jobs. One is me, and the other is my career: my acting ability, my singing ability, my storytelling.
Tell me about a song or a role that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
When I first heard the score to Evita, I thought Andrew Lloyd Webber hated women, because the score is written in a soprano's passaggio. If you think of a rubber band and you pull it, the weakest spot is in the middle. In a soprano you have a chest voice and a head voice, and right in the middle is where you have to negotiate changing gears, right where the break is, and all of the high notes are written in that break. And if you want to play the role with accuracy and passion, it can't be lyric. You have to imbue that music with that energy and that tone, and that was the danger, because I blew out my voice so many times.
If I hit it wrong on Monday night, it affected the rest of that night, which affected Tuesday, which affected Wednesday, through Saturday. It was trial by fire, and I wasn't about to fail. This was my big test. I had a blast acting it. I couldn't sing it, and every night I went on stage in terror, absolute terror. But I knew that if I survived this, I could survive anything.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
I think they said it was loud before they said I was good. That's always been my problem. I was playing Grossinger's, in the Catskills. I was doing my show, and a woman in the front row started waving her arms frantically. I stopped the band, I stopped singing, and she said, 'Too loud, Patti, too loud!' So I was born with these lungs and this voice. It doesn't quit. Considering the abuse I've put my voice through in the course of my lifetime, it's as good as it's ever been.
To this day, when they say, 'Patti, move right, move left,' I have to look at my hands to figure out which is right and which is left when I'm on stage. I'm not dyslexic. I'm dyslexic on stage. It's bizarre.
Show business has broken my body. Musicals have broken my body. I have two new hips, a new shoulder, I've got to get the other shoulder done.
Patti LuPone's Full Biography
A fireball of talent and a musical force to be reckoned with, singer/actress Patti LuPone was born in Northport on Long Island, New York, of Italian heritage. Her parents, Orlando Joseph LuPone, a school administrator, and mother Angela Louise (Patti), a librarian, eventually divorced. She was christened Patti in honor of her great-grand-aunt, the renowned 19th-century opera singer Adelina Patti.
Trained in dance, her early days as a teen were spent as part of a 60s sibling group called "The Lupone Trio," which was comprised of Patti and older twin brothers William and Robert LuPone, the latter moving on to a daunting career of his own. A graduate of Northport High School, she attended the Drama Division of The Juilliard School and became part of its first graduating class, which also included future stars Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers.
In 1972 the legendary John Houseman reshaped said graduating class and formed The Acting Company, which earned a strong reputation on tour as a classical repertory group. Gaining invaluable acting experience, she stayed with the company until 1975. Making her NY theater debut in "The School for Scandal" (1972), she went on to play major roles in "The Hostage," "The Lower Depths," "The Three Sisters" (her Broadway debut), "Measure for Measure," "Scapin," "Edward II," and "The Time of Your Life," among others. However, it was in musicals that she would reign supreme. She played Lucy in a version of "The Beggar's Opera" (1973) and went on to earn distinction in "The Robber Bridegroom" (Tony nomination) (1975), "The Baker's Wife" (1976) and "Working" (1978).
Her incredible pipes and assured countenance eventually earned her the role of a lifetime with "Evita" (1979). As Argentina's calculating and beloved Eva Peron, Patti grabbed the international spotlight with a rare dramatic fury and brilliance. Her electrifying performance earned her both the Tony and Drama Desk awards, and the resulting stardom officially launched her film and TV career.
Minor roles in King of the Gypsies (1978) and 1941 (1979) led to a co-starring role with Tom Skerritt in the vigilante crime Fighting Back (1982). Continuing to show off her singing prowess, she originated the role of Fantine in the London production of "Les Misérables" and became the first American to win the prestigious Olivier Award (for her work in both "Les Miz" and "The Cradle Will Rock") in 1985. She nabbed a second Drama Desk Award and another Tony nomination for her Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes" (1987).
Twice nominated for Emmy awards on TV, she impressed as Lady Bird opposite Randy Quaid's President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the mini-movie LBJ: The Early Years (1987) and scored a resounding hit on the dramatic series Life Goes On (1989) as Libby Thatcher, the loving, protective mother of a son (played by Chris Burke) with Down Syndrome. This groundbreaking program was the first of its kind to center its theme around a person with developmental delays. The show ran a durable four seasons and its title song, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La Da" by Lennon/McCartney, featured Patti's vocals. A round of guest shots over the years have included "Law & Order," "Frazier," "Touched by an Angel," "Will & Grace" (hilariously spoofing her diva image), and a recurring spot on the critically-acclaimed Oz (1997). On film she was well represented by Witness (1985) and in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) as Dan Aykroyd's materialistic wife and minor nemesis to Jessica Tandy.
The concert stage has been a commanding venue for Patti over the years with a number of successful one-woman singing showcases such as "The Lady with the Torch," "Matters of the Heart" and "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda," winning an Outer Critics Circle Award for her "Patti LuPone on Broadway" in 1995. Stage concert versions of "Pal Joey," "Passion," "A Little Night Music," "Can-Can" and "Candide" have greatly added to her enduring popularity, in addition to her three solo evenings at Carnegie Hall. Powerhouse leads in "Sunset Boulevard" (1993) and "Master Class" (1996) have ensured her diva-like place as one of America's contemporary singing immortals. She earned another Tony nomination more recently for her inventive spin on the monstrous Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd" (2005). Since then she has added to her Broadway musical gallery as Rose in "Gypsy" (2008) and as Helena Rubinstein in "War Paint" (2017). She also played the aggressive, scene-stealing role of Joanne ("The Ladies Who Lunch") in a film concert version of Company (2011).
Broaching the millennium and beyond, occasional film appearances have included supporting roles in Family Prayers (1993), Summer of Sam (1999), City by the Sea (2002), Union Square (2011), Parker (2013), The Comedian (2016) and Last Christmas (2019). On the smaller screen, she lent her assertive presence in recurring fashion with 30 Rock (2006), American Horror Story (2011), Penny Dreadful (2014), Anthem: Homunculus (2019) and Pose (2018) and a sturdy role in the mini-series Hollywood (2020).
Married since 1988 to camera operator Matthew Johnston, Patti has one son, Josh, who appeared in a small role in Patti's concert version of "Passion."