#Alexandra billings movie#
#Alexandra billings professional#

She has appeared in the 2005 made-for-TV movie Romy and Michelle: A New Beginning. In the early 2000s, WTTW, the PBS station in Chicago, produced a documentary about Billings' life and career, 'Schoolboy to Showgirl: The Alexandra Billings Story.' As of fall 2021, Billings has resumed performing the role of Morrible. After the closure of Broadway during the COVID-19 pandemic, Billings appeared with several other performers on Good Morning America in fall 2021 to announce the return of several shows to Broadway, including Wicked. She is the first openly transgender person to star in the show. In September 2019, it was announced that Billings would play the role of Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked. In fall 2018, she also appeared in The Nap at Manhattan Theatre Club, and is one of the first openly trans people to be cast in a trans role on Broadway. More recently, Billings has appeared in an autobiographical show, 'S/He and Me'. She was a recipient of the New York MAC Hanson Award for Cabaret Artist of the Year in 2004. She recorded her second CD The Story Goes On in 2003.

#Alexandra billings professional#

She is a former artistic associate of About Face Theatre.īillings is also a professional singer who performs in theaters and nightclubs throughout the United States. Her one-person autobiographical show has toured to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and off Broadway. She has received one Joseph Jefferson Award and five After Dark Awards for her work in Chicago Theatre. She has collaborated on plays with such notable authors as Larry Kramer, Tina Landau, and Jamie Pachino. Most of Billings' professional work has been in Chicago theaters, most notably The Bailiwick Theater, Light Opera Works, Court Theatre, and Steppenwolf Theatre. She also served as a judge of the Miss Continental pageant in 20. Winning a series of beauty contests, she was named Miss Wisconsin, Miss New York, Miss Chicago, Miss Illinois, and Miss Florida. In the early 1980s, Billings worked under the stage name Shanté at the famed Baton Show Lounge in Chicago, Illinois, where she impersonated Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, and Liza Minnelli. In her early adult life, Billings struggled with homelessness and cocaine and opioid addiction, and participated for a time in sex work. She also appeared in Jesus Christ Superstar and The Roar of the Greasepaint-the Smell of the Crowd. She assisted, working backstage with Carol Burnett and Yul Brynner. Billings' father, Robert Billings, was a music teacher at Los Angeles Harbor College and the musical director for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, which influenced her interest in theater. Billings was born in Illinois into a multiracial family she is of European American, African American, and Native American ancestry.