Ruthie Henshall | en

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Award-winning singer, actress, dancer and TV personality Ruthie Henshall is familiar to millions through her work on stage and screen and 2010 was one of her busiest years yet with a host of acting, performing, presenting and writing commitments.

A long-established star of both Broadway and the West End, she is currently appearing as Elvira in the tour of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. This show will open at the Apollo Theatre in March. She recently completed a return to the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago in the West End and on Broadway, a role she originated in 1997 and for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award.

On her return to the UK she also starred in “Ruthie Henshall Sounds of Hollywood “which celebrated the era of the greatest musicals made legendary through the big screen.

In 2008 she starred in the title role of Marguerite at the Theatre Royal Haymarket – a musical collaboration between Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Michel Legrand and Herbert Kretzmer. Marguerite marked the latest in an unparalleled string of musical successes. In fact, she, has rarely been absent from the West End stage during the past twenty-four years.

She trained at the Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey, and soon after leaving landed the role of Maggie in a touring production of A Chorus Line. This was swiftly followed by her West End debut at the New London Theatre in Cats, where she appeared in a variety of roles. At the age of twenty-one she was cast as Ellen in Miss Saigon at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. After spending time at the Chichester Festival Theatre performing in Shakespeare, Molière and the musical Valentine’s Day, based on Shaw’s You never can tell, she was chosen to play Fantine in Les Misérables at London’s Palace Theatre. She went on to play Polly in the original London cast of Crazy for You in 1993, for which she was nominated for her first Olivier.

In 2004, she made her feature film debut in Ahrens and Menken’s A Christmas Carol and, in 2005/6, she filmed Celebrate Oliver! and the Sound of Musicals series for the BBC. In 2006, she returned to the New York stage, playing Emma in David Ives’s two-hander The Other Woman and, in 2007, starred in the Encores! production of Stairway to Paradise at City Centre. As well as two UK concert tours, including a sell-out concert at the Royal Festival Hall, she has also toured the USA in a series of free concerts to thank the American public for its help and support after the events of 11 September 2001, New York Loves America – The Broadway Tour.
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