Christine Baranski

Early life and education

Baranski was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Virginia (née Mazurowska) (1916-2002) and Lucien Baranski (1914-1960), who edited a Polish-language newspaper. She had an older brother, Michael J. Baranski (1949–1998), an advertising executive who died at age 48. She is of Polish descent, and her grandparents were stage actors in Poland before immigrating to the United States. Baranski was raised in a heavily Polish and Catholic neighborhood in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga. She attended high school at the Villa Maria Academy where she was class president and salutatorian. She studied at New York City's Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 3: 1970–1974), where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Career

Stage

Baranski made her off-Broadway debut in Coming Attractions at Playwrights Horizons in 1980, and has appeared in several off-Broadway productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club, starting with Sally and Marsha in 1982. She was in the original 1983 off-Broadway version of Sunday in the Park with George, but did not participate in the show's later Broadway run. Baranski made her Broadway debut in Hide & Seek in 1980. For her next Broadway performance, she played Charlotte in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play and Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She next replaced Judith Ivey as Bonnie in Hurlyburly, mistress Bunny Flingus in the original Broadway production of The House of Blue Leaves, Chris Gorman in Rumors (for which she won her second Tony), Regrets Only, Nick & Nora, and the Encores! concert staging of Follies. In 1992, she starred as Chloe in the original production of Terrence McNally's Lips Together, Teeth Apart, about two straight couples who spend a weekend in a gay community over the Fourth of July weekend. She won her second Drama Desk Award.

At the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Baranski starred as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 2002 (for which she won the 2003 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical) and as the title character in Mame in 2006. In her first Broadway production since 1991, Baranski was featured as the maid Berthe in the 2008 revival of Boeing Boeing. The show garnered two Tony Awards (Best Revival of a Play and Best Actor in a Play for Mark Rylance). The original cast included Bradley Whitford (Bernard), Kathryn Hahn (Gloria), Christine Baranski (Berthe), Gina Gershon (Gabriella), and Mary McCormack (Gretchen). The show closed on January 4, 2009 after 17 previews and 279 performances.

Baranski also appeared in a one-night-only concert benefit performance of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music for Roundabout Theatre Company as Countess Charlotte Malcolm on January 12, 2009. The cast included Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber and Marc Kudisch. In 2018, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Film

Baranski has appeared in various film roles. Some of her better-known roles are as Katherine Archer in The Birdcage (1996), Martha May Whovier in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Mary Sunshine in Chicago (2002) and Connie Chasseur in The Ref (1994). Baranski received further recognition for her role as Tanya Chesham-Leigh in the hit musical film Mamma Mia! (2008), and its sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018). Baranski played Cinderella's stepmother in the 2014 film adaptation of the musical Into the Woods. Baranski has also appeared in the films 9½ Weeks (1986), Legal Eagles (1986), Reversal of Fortune (1990), Addams Family Values (1993), Jeffrey (1995), The Odd Couple II (1998) Bulworth (1998), Cruel Intentions (1999), Bowfinger (1999), Welcome to Mooseport (2004), Trolls (2016) and A Bad Moms Christmas (2017).

Television

Baranski appeared in short-term roles on various daytime soap operas, including All My Children and Another World. Baranski was featured as Cybill Shepherd's sarcastic, hard-drinking friend Maryann Thorpe in the CBS sitcom Cybill, which ran from 1995 until 1998, during which time she hosted Saturday Night Live and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series along with three other nominations (1996, 1997, 1998). During this, Baranski portrayed a librarian named Sonja Umdahl in the "Dick and the Single Girl" episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun. A few years later, Baranski received an Emmy nomination for a guest starring role in the hit NBC series Frasier as controversial tough love radio psychiatrist Dr. Nora Fairchild. The episode, which was named for the character, parodied Dr. Laura Schlessinger. The episode was pulled from syndication by Paramount. Baranski had an uncredited role in the series Now and Again as the voice of Roger's overbearing wife Ruth, who was never seen by viewers.

Baranski later appeared in the 2000–2001 sitcom Welcome to New York and, with John Laroquette, in the 2003–2004 NBC sitcom Happy Family. She co-starred with Bernadette Peters in a pilot for an ABC sitcom, Adopted, in 2005, which was not picked up. She also played Faith Clancy, the mother of Jim Clancy in Ghost Whisperer. In 2009, Baranski began guest-starring in The Big Bang Theory as Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, a dispassionate psychiatrist and neuroscientist and mother of one of the protagonists, Leonard Hofstadter. She first appeared in the second-season episode "The Maternal Capacitance", for which she received an Emmy nomination. Due to the popularity of her first appearance, Baranski returned in the third season for the Christmas episode "The Maternal Congruence", receiving another Emmy nomination. She appeared in a total of 16 episodes during the show's run, earning four Emmy nominations for her recurring role.

From 2009 to 2016, Baranski played the role of Diane Lockhart, a top litigator and senior partner of a Chicago law firm on the CBS series The Good Wife. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for six seasons of the series, in the years 2010 to 2015. Besides her work on The Good Wife and the aforementioned guest appearances on The Big Bang Theory, her other appearances in that period include Ugly Betty in 2009 as Victoria Hartley, the haughty mother of Betty's new boyfriend.

From 2017 to 2022, Baranski reprised her role on The Good Wife in a spin-off titled The Good Fight. The show features Diane Lockhart joining another law firm after being forced to return to work. In the 79th Golden Globe Awards, she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her work in the fifth season of the show. Since 2022 she has portrayed Agnes van Rhijn in the Julian Fellowes-created HBO period drama The Gilded Age starring opposite Carrie Coon, Louisa Jacobson, and Cynthia Nixon. The cast received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Acting style and screen persona

Although recognized for her versatility across genres and performing media, Baranski is particularly known for playing sophisticated and highly educated upper-class women. Consequently, the media began alluding to the resemblance between this repeated on-screen persona and Baranski's real personality. Caroline Hallemann of Town & Country notes that, "For years, the award-winning actress has been the definition of on-screen sophistication." In 2017, the actress told Zac Posen for Interview Magazine, "What I'm getting at is if your career is not predicated on just your physical beauty, you're able to project a sophistication. You can take sophisticated to your grave. You can be that worldly woman, that woman who looks beautiful dressed up." On the other hand, Baranski humorously addressed these claims during her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, "Everybody thinks this is, you know, this sophisticated lady, this New York type, these characters that I play, they think that's me. They should be in a room alone with me when I watch the Buffalo Bills. It is loud."

Personal life

Baranski was married to actor Matthew Cowles from October 1983 until his death on May 22, 2014. Together, they had two daughters, Isabel (born 1984), a lawyer, and Lily (born 1987), an actress. She lives in Bethlehem, Connecticut with her daughters. She is a practicing Catholic, at times accompanying her friend Robert King, the co-creator of The Good Fight, on the walk home during filming in 2021 following Sunday Mass. Like her character Diane Lockhart, Baranski is a member of the Democratic Party and is a liberal feminist. In 2024, she endorsed and campaigned for Kamala Harris.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Video games

Audio

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Christine Baranski

Baranski has received numerous accolades over her career including a Primetime Emmy Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Tony Awards. Baranski is also the most nominated performer at the Critics' Choice Television Awards, with 10 nominations.

References

References

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3. Syme, Rachel. (July 11, 2021). "Christine Baranski Knows It's Good to Be Scared".
4. [http://www.wned.org/Productions/Polonia/default.asp "Polonia: Western New York's Polish-American Legacy"]. ''[[WNED-TV. WNED]]'' {{webarchive. link. (August 9, 2007 wned.org)
5. Triplett, William. (May 12, 2002). "For Baranski, A Most Meaty Opportunity; In 'Sweeney Todd,' Actress Sinks Her Teeth Into a Singing Role". [[The Washington Post]].
6. (March 10, 2022). "[BN] Chronicles: Christine Baranski's Polish Buffalo roots". [[The Buffalo News]].
7. Rousuck, J. Wynn. (May 21, 2006). "The lady has it: Christine Baranski stars in 'Mame' for the 2nd time". [[The Baltimore Sun]].
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10. (September 2009). "Alumni News". The Juilliard School.
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15. (November 12, 2018). "Cicely Tyson, Christine Baranski, David Henry Hwang, More Inducted Into Theater Hall of Fame November 12". Playbill.
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