A Brief History of Movie Stars in Their Broadway Debuts

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This time, the reader question was: What is the history of established movie stars making their Broadway debuts?

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The 2024-2025 season is underway, and with every announcement of a new starry production, jaws drop around the industry. This season is jam packed with productions, including a significant amount of serious star wattage on stage.

Among the stars appearing on Broadway this season are several famous and established actors making their Broadway debuts. More typically, actors get experience on Broadway prior to becoming film stars—one example is Denzel Washington, also returning to Broadway this season—so it’s an interesting and rare occurrence when events go in the opposite direction.

Next month, the new Ayad Akhtar play McNeal premieres at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Akhtar’s previous Broadway forays, Disgraced (2014) and Junk (2017), have earned the playwright Tony nominations for Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (for Disgraced). So, anticipation is high for McNeal, which tells the story of an acclaimed writer named Jacob McNeal, played by Downey Jr., and his struggles, including his obsession with artificial intelligence.

Downey Jr., one of the highest grossing movie stars of all time, has been appearing in films since childhood. But he also spent some time on the stage, including at Stagedoor Manor theatre camp and off-Broadway, before catapulting to stardom. Off-Broadway, Downey Jr. starred in the ill-fated musical American Passion, which closed on opening night at The Joyce Theater in 1983. Downey Jr. was only 18 years old when he appeared in American Passion, which some critics felt was a rip-off of A Chorus Line, with teenagers pouring out their hopes and dreams to an unseen DJ. Jane Krakowski (age 14) and Martha Plimpton (age 12) were fired before opening night. Despite spending some time in his early life on the New York stage, Downey Jr. has never appeared on Broadway. McNeal will mark his Broadway debut at age 59.

Also making a high profile Broadway debut this season is George Clooney at age 63. Clooney will star in Good Night, and Good Luck, which has been announced for a spring 2025 opening. Good Night, and Good Luck is also co-written by Clooney, with Grant Heslov, and based on the 2005 film that Clooney directed, co-wrote and starred in. (Incidentally, one of the film’s other stars was Downey, Jr.) Good Night, and Good Luck chronicles Senator Joseph McCarthy’s historic communist accusations, in particular those against journalist Edward R. Murrow.

Unlike Downey Jr., Clooney does not have early credits on the stage. In 2012, he did make a brief foray onto the stage as an activist, appearing in Dustin Lance Black’s play 8, about the overturning of Prop 8 and the fight for marriage equality. The performance was streamed in order to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.  

It’s always a red carpet event when a major film star makes their Broadway debut.

Comedy icon Lucille Ball made her one Broadway appearance in the 1960 musical Wildcat. This almost wasn’t her Broadway debut however. She was cast in 1923 in the Shubert musical Stepping Stones after impressing the choreographer at her audition—however she was fired before rehearsals started when the show learned she was only 13 years old! Her Broadway debut was also waylaid in 1937, when she appeared in a play aimed for Broadway called Hey Diddle Diddle that closed out of town. At age 49, following her seminal run in I Love Lucy and after a celebrated career on the small and large screens, Ball played a woman of the wild west in the new musical. Audiences missed seeing the beloved character of Lucy Ricardo however, and Ball began bringing some of her television persona to the musical.

Multiple Academy Award winner Sally Field gamely replaced Mercedes Ruehl in the controversial 2002 Edward Albee play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? While uncommon for movie stars to make Broadway debuts following an extremely high level film career, it is even more uncommon to do so as a replacement. Field followed this with the 2017 revival of The Glass Menagerie, where she received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of matriarch Amanda Wingfield. Field was 55 at the time of her debut.

Spanish movie star Antonio Banderas made a distinguished Broadway debut leading the 2003 revival of Nine as Guido Contini. As the central figure in the Maury Yeston- Arthur Kopit musical, surrounded by all of the women in his life, Banderas was charismatic and alluring. His then-wife, fellow movie star, Melanie Griffith, made her Broadway debut playing Roxie in Chicago, just across the street from Nine. These were each of the actor’s only Broadway roles to date.

Having Hugh Jackman on Broadway is always an event, and such was even the case when he made his Broadway debut in The Boy From Oz in 2003. Jackman was already a movie star—although not at the level he is today—when he played his real-life friend Peter Allen in the bio-musical about his life, featuring Allen’s own songs. Audience members at the Imperial during the run of Boy From Oz were known to throw their panties at the stage at Jackman, so popular was the actor in his debut. He has since followed it on Broadway with the plays A Steady Rain and The River, a special concert engagement, and most recently, The Music Man.

In 2006, Julia Roberts, one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies, made her Broadway debut in a revival of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. Roberts’ co-stars were Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper for this production that had paparazzi lined up the block every night just to get a glimpse of Roberts exiting the stage door. The production was a smash but Roberts did not receive glowing reviews which may be part of the reason why it marks her only Broadway role to date.

The 2009 A Little Night Music revival starred Catherine Zeta-Jones in the central role of Desiree Armfeldt. While Zeta-Jones had never appeared on Broadway prior to Night Music, it was hardly her introduction to the stage. On the West End, she had appeared in Annie, Bugsy Malone, and even 42nd Street as ingenue Peggy Sawyer. Following her 2002 Academy Award-winning portrayal of Velma in the screen adaptation of Chicago, Zeta-Jones made a go at Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

2010 brought a Broadway bow from Scarlett Johansson, playing Catherine in a somewhat troubled production of A View From The Bridge. She won a Tony Award for her performance, and was back on Broadway in 2013 appearing in another classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Johansson did previously appear off-Broadway at age 8 in Sophistry at Playwrights Horizons. She only had a few lines in the play with an illustrious cast including Ethan Hawke, Calista Flockhart, Austin Pendleton, and Anthony Rapp.

Later in 2010, Broadway welcomed Brendan Fraser in his sole appearance to date, starring in the misunderstood play Elling. His co-stars were Jennifer Coolidge, Denis O’Hare, Richard Easton, and Jeremy Shamos, in this play about two men who are released from a mental health facility and must prove they can handle the real world, that closed after only 9 performances at the Barrymore.

Beloved film star Tom Hanks landed on Broadway in 2013, making his debut in the Nora Ephron-penned Lucky Guy. Hanks portrayed real-life Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike McAlary. Hanks and Ephron had previously collaborated on movies such as You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle. Lucky Guy sadly premiered less than a year after Ephron passed away.

Just this past season, Hollywood’s Rachel McAdams made an impressive Broadway debut in the poignant Amy Herzog play Mary Jane. McAdams, who received a theatre degree in college, played the mother of a chronically ill child who is surrounded by a community of women.

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