Actor Spotlight | Christine Baranski
/Broadway Stages is excited to host the production of the HBO hit series “The Gilded Age.” And one of the actors that is contributing to the success of the show is Christine Baranski, who plays the character Agnes van Rhijn. In this post we take a look at Baranski’s career, which includes a presence on our stages for more than 15 years.
Quick Facts:
Birthday: May 2, 1952 in Buffalo, New York
Major Awards: 1 Primetime Emmy Award, 2 Tony Awards, 2 Drama Desk Awards
Broadway Stages Productions: "The Good Wife," "The Good Fight," "The Gilded Age"
Baranski has acting in her DNA, as her grandparents performed in the Polish theater before emigrating to New York. She told the Wall Street Journal that her grandmother, who she shared a room with as a child, inspired her to become an actress.
As a teenager, Baranski excelled in ballet and participated in school plays, though initially not on stage. A shy teenager, she worked backstage until a drama teacher encouraged her to audition for a play. She landed a part and continued to pursue her acting studies after graduation, earning a spot at Julliard in 1970 and graduating with a BFA in 1974.
Three years later she made her professional acting debut on an episode of the short-lived CBS sitcom "Busting Loose." Baranski continued to earn small parts on TV and in films throughout the '80s, but she found greater success on the stage. She appeared in multiple Broadway plays, including Tom Stoppard's 1984 drama "The Real Thing," which earned her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She starred alongside Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close, both of whom she would later work with again in 1990's Oscar-winning "Reversal of Fortune." A teenager who portrayed her daughter in the play would also go on to have a very successful acting career. The two actresses would reunite nearly four decades later on the HBO series "The Gilded Age," this time playing sisters, not mother and daughter.
Five years after winning her first Tony Award, Baranski won a second Tony in the same category for her performance in Neil Simon's "Rumors." After conquering Broadway, she shifted her focus to film and television, landing her big break in the mid-'90s with a main role on the CBS sitcom "Cybill." Her performance as Maryanne Thorpe, the title character's best friend, earned Baranski her first Primetime Emmy nomination (and only win to date), in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. She would go on to garner 15 more nominations over the next three decades for "Cybill," "Frasier," "The Big Bang Theory," and "The Good Wife," the series that introduced her to the Broadway Stages family.
Baranski portrayed attorney Diane Lockhart on seven seasons of "The Good Wife" and six seasons of its spin-off "The Good Fight" from 2009 to 2022, both of which films at Broadway Stages. After the series ended, Baranski did not stay away from our studios for long. In fact, she never really left. In 2022 she began to portray the uptight Agnes van Rhijn on HBO's "The Gilded Age," starring alongside Cynthia Nixon, who nearly four decades earlier at the age of 17 had played her daughter in "The Real Thing" on Broadway.
Baranski has also had success on the big screen, with a breakthrough supporting role in 1996's hit comedy "The Birdcage" and as part of the ensemble cast of the 2008 hit musical "Mamma Mia!" and its sequel, 2018's "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!"
We are thrilled that Baranski continues to support New York's film and television industry and thankful for the decade and a half of presence on our soundstages.
