Sally Murphy (actress)

Murphy is the only child of Edward, an electrician, and Pat Murphy, a social worker.^[2] She grew up in Auburn Gresham, Chicago, Illinois. As a young child she did skits with neighborhood friends and studied piano. She appeared in school shows in junior high school and starred in musical performances and theater at Lincoln-Way High School in New Lenox, from which she graduated in 1980. She majored in voice at Northwestern University graduating in 1984.^[2]

After college, she performed in plays in Chicago, working with the Goodman Theatre in 1986.^[2] Three years later, she played Rose of Sharon in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, along with Steppenwolf co-founder Gary Sinese (Tom Joad) and Lois Smith (Ma Joad).^[2] She repeated this role at La Jolla Playhouse, London’s National Theatre, and then Cort Theatre on Broadway.^[2][3] She also appeared in the television adaptation of the play for the PBS series American Playhouse in 1991.^[4] In the 1994 Broadway revival of the musical Carousel, Murphy played Julie Jordan alongside Audra McDonald as Carrie Pipperidge.^[5]

In 1995, after Murphy saw the hit play Skylight at London's National Theatre, she told Steppenwolf management she wanted to bring the play there, struck by its dramatic presentation of a relationship on stage and challenging role for the lead actress.^[6] Steppenwolf produced the play in 1997 with Murphy as Kyra Hollis.^[6]

In 2001 at the Vineyard Theatre, she portrayed Susan Smith in Cornelius Eady's two character play Brutal Imagination, which centers on the real-life 1994 case of Smith, a white woman from South Carolina who falsely claimed that an African American man had kidnapped her two young sons; she had drowned them herself. Joe Morton played the imaginary Black man Smith invented to blame for the crime.^[7] The actors reunited in 2025 to do a one night reading with proceeds benefiting the Innocence Project.^[8] She appeared in The Apple Family plays as the character Jane Apple in Regular Singing (2013),^[9] reprising the role in a Zoom format in 2020 when theaters were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[10]

Murphy has been a member of Steppenwolf since 1993.^[1] Her credits there include The Common Pursuit (1988), The Grapes of Wrath (1989), Skylight (1997), Uncle Vanya (2001), Mother Courage and Her Children (2001), The Royal Family (2002), August: Osage County (2007), Sex with Strangers (2011), Time Stands Still (2012), The Minutes (2017), and Linda Vista (2017).^[1] Her Broadway credits include The Grapes of Wrath (1990), Carousel (1994), The Wild Party (2000), Fiddler on the Roof (2004), August: Osage County (2007), Linda Vista (2019), and The Minutes (2022).^[11] She was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical in 2015 for her performance as Jenny in The Threepenny Opera.^[12]

She also appeared in several films between 1992 and 2001.^[6][13]