TOVAH FELDSHUH

Biography

Tovah Feldshuh starred on Broadway as Irena Gut Opdyke in Irena’s Vow, for which she received the BroadwayWorld.com Theatre Fans’ Choice Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. For her work on the New York stage, from Yentl to Saravà! to Lend Me A Tenor to Golda’s Balcony, Tovah Feldshuh has earned four Tony nominations for Best Actress and won four Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Obie, the Theatre World Award and the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actress (for Golda’s Balcony). On October 3, 2004, Golda’s Balcony became the longest-running one-woman show in the history of Broadway. In June 2008, Ms. Feldshuh debuted Golda’s Balcony in London at The Shaw Theatre. In 2010, she received the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance in a Touring Show for Golda’s Balcony. In June 2010, Tovah brought Golda’s Balcony to Bucks County for Theatre Ariel and Bristol Riverside Theatre’s Day of Jewish Theater.

Film audiences recognize Ms. Feldshuh from Fox Searchlight’s Kissing Jessica Stein, for which she won the Golden Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress; A Walk On The Moon with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen; Happy Accidents with Marisa Tomei, The Corruptor with Mark Wahlberg, Toll Booth (winner – Best Supporting Actress – Method Fest 2005), among others. Most recently she appeared onscreen in O Jerusalem in which she plays Golda Meir opposite Ian Holm and Tom Conti, Lady in the Water for M. Night Shyamalan opposite Paul Giamatti and Just My Luck with Lindsay Lohan. Films soon to be released include Mount Of Olives with F. Murray Abraham, Eavesdrop (written and directed by Matthew Miele), and Love Life for German actress and director Maria Schrader. She has just wrapped filming on Buddy Gilbert Comes Alive for Mark Erlbaum and Laura Lopez’s Baker in which she plays the title role of ex-Vietnam and Korean War nurse Ruth Baker.

On television, she received her first Emmy nomination for her portrayal of the Czech freedom fighter Helena in Holocaust. In 2004 she was nominated for her second Emmy for her work on Law & Order as defense attorney Danielle Melnick.

Three seasons ago her one-woman show, Tovah: Out Of Her Mind!, sold out in London’s West End at the Duke Of York’s and culminated in a symphonic concert with Billy Crystal at Los Angeles’ Royce Hall. The Boston Globe selected Tovah: Out Of Her Mind! as the best one-person show of 2000. She was the first artist ever to be asked to extend at the renowned NYC nightclub Feinstein’s at the Loew’s Regency in her smash cabaret show Tovah: In a Nutshell!

Ms. Feldshuh, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and a winner of the McKnight Fellowship to the Guthrie Theatre and the University of Minnesota, has taught at Yale, Cornell and New York Universities and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in June, 2005. She is a supporter of Seeds of Peace, a non-profit, non-political organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict and is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitas Award and the Israel Peace Medal. Ms. Feldshuh is married to New York attorney, Andrew Harris Levy. They have two children, Garson Brandon and Amanda Claire.