ASSEMBLED PARTIES' Judith Light Wins Best Featured Actress - Play

Judith Light has won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role for her portrayal of 'Faye' in THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES.

In June of 2012, Light was awarded the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for Other Desert Cities. She also won a Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress for the same play. Written by Jon Robin Baitz, Other Desert Cities is centered on a daughter played by Rachel Griffiths who presents her family with a memoir she is about to publish. Light played the role of Silda Grauman, the alcoholic aunt who is known to make snide remarks.

Light was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play in 2011, for her performance in Lombardi, the American play by Academy Award winner Eric Simpson. Directed by Tony nominee Thomas Kail, the play was based on the best-selling biography When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by Pulitzer-winning author David Maraniss. Light stared in the play as Marie Lombardi alongside Dan Lauria who played sports icon Vince Lombardi.

Light's television career began with her two-time Best Actress Emmy award-winning turn as Karen Wolek on "One Life to Live." She then went on to play Angela Bower on the hit comedy series "Who's the Boss?" Up until 2010, she was seen on the Emmy Award-winning ABC-TV series "Ugly Betty," for which she received an Emmy nomination playing the character of Claire Meade. Simultaneously, she co-starred on NBC's long-running drama "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" in the recurring role of Supreme Court Judge Elizabeth Donnelly. Light has also starred in "Phenom" (created by James Brooks), "The Simple Life," created by long-time manager/producer Herb Hamsher, "The Stones" (created by Max Mutchnick, David Kohan, and Jenji Kohan) and in over 15 television movies, including her role as Ryan's mother, Jeanne, in "The Ryan White Story."

Light has starred in three independent films, The Shoemaker with Danny Aiello; Ira & Abby by Jennifer Westfeldt, with Robert Klein, Fred Willard and Frances Conroy - which was voted Best Comedy at the 2007 HBO Comedy Festival; and Save Me with Chad Allen and Robert Gant, a film which she also produced with Herb Hamsher through their Production Company, Tetrahedron Productions, in conjunction with GKE and Mythgarden Productions. Save Me had its U.S. premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, followed by screenings at both NYC's NewFest and LA's Outfest, as well as a screening and panel discussion aboard RSVP Vacations Queen Mary II transatlantic crossing. Save Me was released theatrically nationwide in the summer of 2008 by First Run Features.

In 2005, Light returned to her performing roots in theater, opening at MCC in New York in the production of Laura Wade's Colder Than Here. Light showcased her musical abilities in 2004 in the role of Joanne in Steven Sondheim's Company at the Freud Theatre in L.A. as part of Reprise! Light also appeared in Athol Fugard's Sorrows and Rejoicings in 2002 at the Second Stage Theatre in New York and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

In 2001, Light opened in Washington, D.C. at the Shakespeare Theatre Company portraying the title character in the Henrik Ibsen classic Hedda Gabler. In 1999 she also took to the stage at the Union Square Theater, starring as the brilliant and uncompromising Dr. Vivian Bearing in the critically acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize-winning Off-Broadway play Wit. Originally directed by Derek Anson Jones, Wit is a heartbreaking and at times very funny play about how Dr. Bearing copes with ovarian cancer, and how it transforms her and her views of life. A university professor who has always treasured her independence and lack of personal connections, Dr. Bearing is forced to change her stance when she undergoes radical chemotherapy. Light performed in New York until January 2000 and then toured with Wit nationwide, in such cities as Boston, Washington (at the Kennedy Center) and San Francisco. For her outstanding performance, Light received the Helen Hayes Award in Washington, D.C., as well as the Elliot Norton Award in Boston.

A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA, Light has worked in repertory theaters throughout the United States and Canada as well as a USO Tour of Guys and Dolls with William Atherton and Paula Wagner throughout Europe. Light's Broadway debut was in A Doll's House with Liv Ullmann and was followed by a season at the Eugene O'Neil Playwright's conference.

Photo credit: Walter McBride