Laura Benanti

Laura Benanti
Benanti at the 2012 Drama League Benefit Gala
Born	Laura Ilene Vidnovic (1979-07-15) July 15, 1979 (age 37) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1998-present
Height	5 ft 8 in (1.73 m)
Spouse(s)	Chris Barron (m. 2005; div. 2006) Steven Pasquale (m. 2007; div. 2013) Patrick Brown (m. 2015)
Children	1

Laura Ilene Benanti (born Laura Ilene Vidnovic on July 15, 1979) is an American actress and a singer. She played Louise in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, winning the Tony Award, and appeared in the stage musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, winning the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played Baroness Elsa Schräder in the 2013 NBC television production of The Sound of Music Live! and in 2015 began playing twin sisters Alura and Astra in the TV series Supergirl.

Benanti was born in New York City, daughter of Linda Wonneberger, a vocal coach and former actress, and Martin Vidnovic, a Broadway actor and singer. She is of Serbian, German, Irish, and Native American heritage. When quite young, her parents divorced and she moved to Kinnelon, New Jersey, with her mother and her stepfather Salvatore Benanti, a psychotherapist, whose name she took and whom she has referred to as her father.

Benanti remembers being "very serious" and "a bit of an ugly duckling" as a child, and was intensely interested in musical theatre, saying she "came out of the womb as a 40 year old", being interested in Sondheim at an early age, distancing her from other children. (In 2008, Benanti told The New York Times that she drew on this loneliness in her portrayal of the neglected Louise in Gypsy.) Though her parents refused to let Laura audition for professional theatre, Laura appeared in several high school and community productions, including Evita (as Peron's mistress), Follies (as Young Heidi), and Into the Woods (as Cinderella). At 16, Benanti played the title role in her high school production of Hello, Dolly! and won a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Actress in a high school production. She graduated from Kinnelon High School in 1997.