Born To Sing … And Dance, And Act

Maybe Patti LuPone wasn't a star in her days at New York's famed Julliard school, but she went on to become one of Broadway's most famous leading ladies, lighting up the stage in shows like "Anything Goes."

LuPone joked with CBS Sunday Morning contributor Rita Braver that while she wants to be considered an actor who sings, most of her fans, "want me to sing."

"Thank God I have a voice," LuPone says.

And LuPone can really belt it out. Whether it's singing standards or warming up for her role in the Broadway revival of "Sweeney Todd," as the wife of the delightfully wicked London baker who makes meat pies out of human beings killed by the demon barber Sweeney Todd.

LuPone says she thoroughly enjoys her part as Mrs. Lovett. "She's pragmatic and she'll do anything to keep her man."

As LuPone prepared for one evening's performance, she spoke about the importance of performing all aspects of a role.

"It's really the actors craft to know how to prep…how to put on a wig…how to create a character make up," she says.

LuPone even plays the tuba in the show, just one of the many skills she picked up growing up on Long Island where she was voted "Most Musical, Most Dramatic and Class Clown in high school.

Yet Lupone says she was only 4 when she realized acting was what she wanted to do with her life. "I fell in love with the audience," LuPone admits.

But it was her time here at Julliard that really turned her into a pro.

"The teachers were trying to break down your individual psyche to create the Julliard actor," she says. But, we weren't necessarily given that information. We were getting slugged in the head, slugged in the head, slugged in the heart, slugged in the — the groin."

While choking up a little, LuPone half-jokingly says of the Julliard experience, "I still haven't recovered. You get a technique that is still blossoming to this day; a technique, an understanding, an experience."

With her training she always found work as an actress in TV and film as well as theater even though LuPone says her face was not the easiest to cast.

Pointing to her face, LuPone says, "There's a big nose, there are big lips. It's an Italian face. I knew when I was 16-years-old, I didn't belong in this country.

"I was born here, but this is not Brooke Shields," LuPone adds dryly.

But her unconventional looks were perfect for the role that would change her life. In 1979, director Hal Prince cast her as Evita Peron, the controversial wife of Argentine Dictator Juan Peron, in the first U.S. production of "Evita."

Critics were unimpressed with the show — and with her — but "Evita" was a smash-hit anyway.

LuPone became a Broadway star and ended up winning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. But there was a downside to playing a woman who many viewed as a monster.

"I went into it as an actress and I left it as a blond tap dancer — fascist tap dancer," LuPone jokes.

Even now, LuPone still endures comments that she is mean.

"How many years later is it? And people say, 'Oh, she's a real bitch.' And it's like well, give me a chance," LuPone says.

One person who did give her a chance was Matt Johnson, now her husband. They met in 1985 while LuPone was playing Lady Bird Johnson in the film "LBJ: The Early Years."

Their son Josh is 15, but she is definitely a working wife and mom. She has done many more plays, winning a second Tony nomination playing Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes."

For four season, LuPone played the mother of a boy with Downs syndrome on the hit television series "Life Goes On."

But it has not all been smooth sailing. In 1989, she recreated the role of faded movie star Norma Desmond in the London version of Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Sunset Boulevard." But she was replaced by Glenn Close in the Broadway production. LuPone was so distraught that it was a year before she could bring herself to work again.

"It was devastating," she says.

But she did come back, invigorated with a healthy respect for her talent.

"I'm doing something I'm supposed to be doing," LuPone says, "and I'm thrilled to death I'm being allowed to do it."