Christine Baranski

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.^[12][8] In her first Broadway production since 1991, Baranski was featured as the maid Berthe in the 2008 revival of Boeing Boeing.^[13] 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.^[14] The cast included Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber and Marc Kudisch. In 2018, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.^[15]

Baranski is due to make her first West End appearance in a production of Hay Fever in September 2026, which she described as a "dream come true".^[16]

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.^[17] 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.^[18] 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.^[19][20] The episode was pulled from syndication by Paramount.^[20] 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.^[21][22]

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.^[23][24]

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.^[25] 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.

Film

Television

Theatre

Video games

Audio