Laura Benanti

Laura Benanti (born July 15, 1979) is an American actress of television, film and Broadway theatre noted for her award winning performance as Louise in the 2008 production of Gypsy. Laura appears on the original cast albums of each of her Broadway roles, as well as compilation albums of Stephen Schwartz and Maury Yeston. She also appears as a guest artist on the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C.'s live album, You've Got to Be Carefully Taught: The Songs of Hammerstein & Sondheim, taken from a performance at the Kennedy Center in June 2002. She can now be heard on the cast album of Gypsy, which was released in August 2008 from Time/Life Records, and on the new studio cast album of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro, which was released by Sony Classics in February 2009. A songwriter and guitarist, Benanti has written songs privately since at least the early 2000s; in 2005, she said that she was working on a folk-rock solo CD, though "Musical theatre is my first love. I want to take my music and orchestrate it in a kind of old fashioned style, and take some standards and 'popularize' them—do a true crossover. I'm working on it.