Tony Winner Laura Benanti Delivers Passport to Stranded Author in D.C.

According to a story in The Washington Post, Tony winner Laura Benanti was at the airport in Los Angeles last weekend when a woman asked the singer to deliver an envelope to her husband in Washington, D.C., where Benanti was heading to perform her cabaret show at Wolf Trap.

Benanti's pianist Todd Almond smartly urged the actress to check the woman's story -- turns out her husband was on his way to Nepal via D.C. but had forgotten his passport and was stranded at customs.

Benanti reportedly (and jokingly) asked, "Is the passport made of cocaine?" before agreeing to transport the document to one Daniel C. Taylor at the Reagan National Airport.

Taylor is an author, conservationist and former Johns Hopkins University professor. He told the Post he didn't know who Benanti was until he looked her up on Google the following day.

He gave Benanti a copy of his first novel, CAIRNS, which she proudly showcased at her Wolf Trap concert, saying, "This is what happens when you volunteer to be a drug mule. You get books."

Benanti will soon appear in the Rockettes' New York Spring Spectacular and appeared in NBC's The Sound of Music Live in 2013. She has starred on Broadway in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, In the Next Room, Gypsy (which earned her a Tony in 2008), The Wedding Singer, Nine, Something Good, Into the Woods, Swing! and The Sound of Music.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride