Background and career
Idina Kim Menzel ( ih-DEE-nə men-ZEL; née Mentzel; born May 30, 1971) is an American actress, singer and songwriter. She is known for her work in theater, having starred in Broadway and West End productions, before expanding to film, television, and music. Menzel rose to prominence as a stage actress in 1996, making her Broadway debut as performance artist Maureen Johnson in the rock musical Rent, which earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. In 2003, she originated the role of Elphaba in the musical Wicked on Broadway, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. After leaving the show in 2005, she reprised the role in the musical's original West End production in 2006, becoming the highest-paid actress in West End theatre history. In 2014, Menzel returned to Broadway in the musical If/Then, for which she received a third Tony Award nomination. Menzel began working in film and television in the early 2000s. After reprising her Rent role in the musical's 2005 film adaptation, she had a supporting role in Disney's musical fantasy film Enchanted (2007). She played the recurring character Shelby Corcoran on the musical television series Glee from 2010 to 2013. Since 2013, Menzel has voiced Elsa in Disney's Frozen franchise; "Let It Go", a song she recorded for the first film, peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Menzel has since played supporting roles in the films Uncut Gems (2019), Cinderella (2021), American Murderer (2022), and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023). As a recording artist and songwriter, Menzel has released seven studio albums, including I Stand (2008) and Holiday Wishes (2014); the latter peaked at number six on the Billboard 200, becoming her highest-charting studio album to date.
Idina Kim Mentzel was born on May 30, 1971, in Manhattan. She grew up in New Jersey until about age three; her family moved to Syosset, New York, on Long Island. Her parents are Stuart Mentzel, a pajama salesman, and Helene Goldberg, a therapist. She has a younger sister named Cara. Menzel is Jewish and her grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe. She attended J. Irving Baylis Elementary School in Plainview, New York; H. B. Thompson Middle School in Syosset; and Syosset High School. When Menzel was 15 years old, her parents divorced and she began working as a wedding and bar/bat mitzvah singer, a job that she held while a student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts; she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama there in 1992. Idina changed the spelling of her surname to "Menzel" to better reflect the pronunciation that the Mentzel family had adopted in the United States. She was friends with actor Adam Pascal before they worked together in Rent. In 2017, Irish songwriter Jimmy Walsh who was based in New York City said that in 1992, Menzel had recorded a demo for him of the song "In Your Eyes", which went on to win the Eurovision Song Contest 1993 for Irish singer Niamh Kavanagh. Menzel was paid $75 for the recording.
In 1995, Menzel auditioned for Rent, which became her first professional theatre job and her Broadway debut. Rent opened Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop on January 26, 1996, but it moved to Broadway's Nederlander Theatre due to its popularity. For her performance as Maureen Johnson in the original cast of the musical, Menzel received a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, losing to Ann Duquesnay for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. Her final performance in the musical was on July 1, 1997. Despite the Tony nod, Menzel said she faded into "obscurity" for eight years. After the success of Rent, Menzel released her first solo album entitled Still I Can't Be Still on Hollywood Records. Menzel also originated the role of Dorothy in Summer of '42 at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, starred as Sheila in the New York City Center Encores! production of Hair and appeared on Broadway as Amneris in Aida. Menzel earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance as Kate in the Manhattan Theatre Club's 2000 Off-Broadway production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party. Her other Off-Broadway credits include the pre-Broadway run of Rent and The Vagina Monologues.
In 2003, Menzel was cast to star alongside Kristin Chenoweth in Wicked, a musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman based upon Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Shortly after a San Francisco tryout, Wicked began previews at Broadway's Gershwin Theatre on October 8, 2003, with an official opening night on October 30. Menzel's performance as Elphaba, the misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West, garnered critical acclaim, for which she won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Menzel's character also earned her a devoted fanbase, particularly among young girls who empathized with her misunderstood character, as well as a gay following. She can be heard on the show's Original Broadway Cast (OBC) recording. During her penultimate performance on January 8, 2005, she fell through a trap door during the melting scene and cracked a lower rib. This injury prevented her from performing in her scheduled final show on January 9; her standby, Shoshana Bean, played Elphaba at that performance. Menzel did, however, make a special appearance, in a red tracksuit, at that performance, performed her last song, and received a five-minute standing ovation. Five years later, Broadway.com readers voted Menzel their favorite Elphaba performer out of the eleven actresses who had by then played the character on Broadway. After Wicked, Menzel appeared Off-Broadway in the Public Theater's production of See What I Wanna See, a Michael John LaChiusa-penned musical whose run ended in December 2005, for which she received Drama Desk Award and Drama League Award nominations. She reprised her Tony Award-winning role as Elphaba in the West End production of Wicked when it opened at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre on September 27, 2006. She starred alongside Helen Dallimore as Glinda and Adam Garcia as Fiyero. During her run, she was the highest-paid female performer in the West End at $30,000 per week. Menzel finished her West End run on December 30, 2006. She was succeeded by Elphaba standby Kerry Ellis. Menzel played the role of Florence in the 21st-anniversary concert of the musical Chess at London's Royal Albert Hall, from May 12 to 13, 2008, alongside Kerry Ellis, Adam Pascal, and Josh Groban. In 2008, she headlined the Powerhouse Theatre's reading of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's musical Nero from July 11 to 13, performing the role of Nero's mistress, Poppea. She was joined by Glee costar Lea Michele as Claudia Octavia, Jeffrey Carleson as Nero, and Michael Arden as Octavia's brother, Brittanicus. By February 28, 2013, Menzel was cast to star as Elizabeth in the new Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey Broadway musical If/Then. Directed by Michael Greif (with whom Menzel previously worked on the original production of Rent), it had its world premiere at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., starting with previews on November 5, 2013, until November 24, 2013. Following the out-of-town tryout, the show moved to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway and began previews on March 4, 2014. It officially opened on March 30, 2014. For her performance, Menzel received her second Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Musical and performed Always Starting Over, but lost to Jessie Mueller for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. If/Then closed on Broadway on March 22, 2015, after 29 previews and 401 regular performances. Menzel reprised the role of Elizabeth (along with original Broadway cast members Lachanze, James Snyder, and Anthony Rapp) on the first seven stops of the show's national tour from October 2015 to January 2016. She departed the show (along with LaChanze and Snyder) on the last day of the Costa Mesa, California engagement, on January 24, 2016. Her replacement was Jackie Burns (who previously served as Menzel's standby in the Broadway production) starting January 27, 2016, in Dallas, Texas. Later, in 2018, Menzel was cast as Jodi in Roundabout Theatre Company's World Premiere production of Joshua Harmon's new play Skintight. The show premiered Off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. It began previews on May 31, 2018, opened on June 21, 2018, and ran for strictly limited engagement till August 26, 2018. The play earned Menzel rave reviews and marked it her first major New York Theater non-musical role. A year later, she reprised her performance in Skintight marking its debut on the West Coast. The production played the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, California running from September 3 – October 6, 2019. While appearing in Skintight, Menzel read for the role of Mary Jane in a workshop for the Broadway rock musical Jagged Little Pill. In late 2019, Menzel revealed on Twitter that she was working on "a mystery project" with Justin Tranter, Caroline Pennell and Eve Ensler (later known as V). In mid-2021, it was announced that this project was Wild: A Musical Becoming, set to perform at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA from December 3, 2021, to January 21, 2022 (she was only scheduled to perform through December 23). It was later announced that she would star as Bea, with contributions to the lyrics. On December 17, due to COVID, it was announced that the show on that day was cancelled; it was later announced that the performance on the following two days and eventually all the following productions were cancelled, making December 16 her last performance.
Menzel plays the main role of Jesse in Redwood, a musical that premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California on February 25, 2024. The musical opened on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre, the same theater where Menzel made her Broadway debut in Rent, on February 13, 2025.[1] Menzel and Tina Landau created the musical along with composer/co-lyricist Kate Diaz. Redwood was met with mixed reviews. Following not receiving any Tony nominations and low ticket sales, it closed on Broadway on May 18, 2025, after 17 previews and 127 regular performances. The show has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in the Outstanding Broadway Production category. The ceremony was held on March 5, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Menzel initially struggled to cross over into a solo music career beyond stage musicals, claiming the industry did not take her seriously as a pop or rock singer due to her Broadway origins. Menzel performed at the 1998 Lilith Fair summer concert festival and continues to write and perform original music. She has toured extensively and frequently performs in various venues throughout New York City. She produced and released her debut album, Still I Can't Be Still, for Hollywood Records in 1998. One single from the album, "Minuet", made the Radio & Records CHR/Pop Tracks chart at number 48 in October 1998. Following the album release, she embarked on a promotional tour, but after selling fewer than 10,000 copies in the US and missing the Billboard 200, Menzel's label put the album out of print, and she was dropped from the label. However, the album was re-released once she began to rise to greater fame with her Tony-winning performance in Wicked. Her second album, Here, was released independently by Zel Records in 2004. Menzel contributed to the soundtrack of Desperate Housewives in 2005. She also appears on Ray Charles's album Genius and Friends, which was also released in 2005, on the track "I Will Be There". In 2007, she appeared on the Beowulf soundtrack singing the end credits song, "A Hero Comes Home". Also, in 2007, Menzel's powerful singing voice led her to be asked to accompany the baritone British X Factor runner-up, Rhydian Roberts, on his debut album, duetting on the song "What If".
