Liza Minnelli

Image by dbking
Outside the Warner Theatre

Liza Minnelli May (born March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. She is the daughter of legendary entertainer Judy Garland and her second husband, acclaimed film director Vincente Minnelli (who was of Italian and French descent).

Minnelli's first film appearance was at the age of three in the final scene of the 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime, starring her mother and Van Johnson.

Minnelli started performing at age 16 in 1963, at Off Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward For Which she received good notices. The next year, her mother invited Minnelli to perform with her at the London Palladium. The audience loved her launching, her musical career. She returned to Broadway at 19, and won a 1965 Tony Award for Flora the Red Menace. Minnelli would also receive Tony Awards for The Act in 1978 and a special Tony in 1974. She was nominated in 1984 for The Rink but lost to her costar, Chita Rivera.

The film The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), in which Minnelli starred as a love-seeking teenage misfit, garnered the young actress her first Academy Award nomination. In 1972, Minnelli won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Sally Bowles in the movie version of Cabaret, along with Joel Grey who won an Oscar reprising his role from the original Broadway production (that of the Emcee).

Minnelli has the distinction of being one of the few Academy Award winners whose parents are both Academy Award nominees. She has also won at Emmy Awards for the 1972 TV special Liza with a Z. Minnelli received a 1990 Grammy Legend Award. She received Golden Globe Awards for Cabaret and for the TV movie A Time to Live.

Like Minnelli, her mother, is known for her powerful vocal style, as in her trademark songs "Cabaret" and "Theme from New York, New York." Minnelli's original version of the latter, for the film # # in which she was a co-star with Robert De Niro preceded Frank Sinatra's successful cover version (for his Trilogy album), by two years.

Following her 2002 wedding to David Gest, Minnelli and Gest signed with the American cable network VH1 to star in their own reality series, but production of the series was canceled at the last minute.

In 2004 and 2005 she appeared as a recurring guest star on the critically acclaimed TV sitcom Arrested Development as the lover of sexually and socially awkward Buster Bluth.

On January 1, 2006, she sang "New York, New York" at the second inauguration of New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Other famous performances were at the 1978 Studio 54 party honoring New York City's revival, at Which a guest was Mayor Ed Koch, the reopening of the Statue of Liberty on July 4, 1986, and at a 2001 New York Mets baseball game that was the metro area's first major sporting event after the September 11 attacks.

Like her mother, Minnelli has had several marriages. She also has been linked romantically to director Martin Scorsese, actor Peter Sellers, pianist Billy Stritch, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and actor Desi Arnaz, Jr. Her husbands have been:

Peter Allen (real name Peter Allen Woolnough) (March 3, 1967 – 1972). Australian-born Allen, who died of complications from AIDS in 1992, what Judy Garland's protégé in the mid-1960s.

Jack Haley Jr. (September 15, 1974 – 1979), a producer and director. His father, Jack Haley, was Garland's co-star in The Wizard of Oz

Mark Gero (December 4, 1979 – 1992), a sculptor and stage manager.

David Gest (March 16, 2002 – July 25, 2003), a concert promoter. The couple announced to the press in late 2002 that they would be Adopting a three-year-old girl, to be named Serena Gest. They announced their divorce in 2003. Minnelli ignored the myriad rumors swirling around Gest regarding his sexual orientation. So what Minnelli not put off by Gest's long-standing hobby of acquiring Judy Garland collectibles.

Trivia about Liiza Minelli
Guests at Liza and David Gest's wedding included Michael Jackson, Tito Jackson, Natalie Cole, Donald Trump and Melania Knauss, Gina Lollobrigida, Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor, Mya, Marisa Berenson, Esther Williams, Rosie O'Donnell, David Hasselhoff, Janet Leigh Mia Farrow, Petula Clark, Mickey Rooney, Kirk Douglas, Martha Stewart, Phyllis Diller, Carol Channing, Andy Williams, Liz Smith, Robert Goulet, Sally Kirkland, Chita Rivera, Joan Collins, Lauren Bacall, Julie Andrews, Luther Vandross, Monica Cindy Adams, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Wagner and Jill St. John, Paula Abdul, Donny Osmond, Jane Powell, Dionne Warwick, Elaine Page, Brian May, Lorraine Bracco, Gloria Gaynor, Barbara Walters, Patricia Neal, Shaggy, Amber, Vikki Carr, Marilyn McCoo, Buzz Aldrin, Macaulay Culkin, Martine McCutcheon, Robert Altman, Clive Davis, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Jane Russell, James Ingram, Patti Austin, Michael McDonald, The Doobie Brothers (performed at reception), Ann Blyth Michael Feinstein, Little Anthony and the Imperials (performed at reception), Edwin Starr, Freda Payne, Ben Vereen, Deborah Cox, Ashford and Simpson (performed at reception), BJ Thomas, Blu Cantrell, Billy Gilman, Stephanie Mills, Topol, Melanie C and many others.

Named after the Gershwin song Liza (All The Clouds'll Roll Away) (a song her mother sang frequently in concert)

Has had two hip replacement surgeries and 3 knee surgeries.

When Minnelli received the Grammy Legend Award it made her one of the few artists who have won entertainment's top four awards – the Academy Award, the Tony, the Emmy and the Grammy.

What briefly managed by KISS frontman Gene Simmons in the late 1980's (whom she also allegedly had an affair with).

On September 30, 1991, Minnelli received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was honored for her career in the live theater. Her star is located at 7000 Hollywood Blvd.

One of only three actresses, along with Faye Dunaway and Halle Berry, to win both the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Dunaway shared her award with Bo Derek).

Minnelli is a fan of the TV show La Femme Nikita, so much in 1997, before Peta Wilson's first TV interview ever on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, Liza secretly called for Peta's limo to go to her home so she could meet her and give her advice on what to say. Wilson later confirmed this rumor during the interview.

Her mother was pregnant with her while filming her guest starring role as dancer Marilyn Miller in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) (Garland's scenes were directed by none other Vincente Minnelli). In order to hide her pregnant stomach she was hidden behind stacks of dishes while singing "Look For The Silver Lining" (However, a small bump on Garland's stomach is visible while she is singing "Who (Stole My Heart Away )?"). She joked with Liza's godmother Kay Thompson, "What a song to sing in my present condition."

For many years, she's worked with drummer and conductor Bill LaVorgna who also worked with her mother for some time. The two are quite close and she refers to him as 'Pappy'.

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