B’way star Marin Mazzie dies at age 57
Actress and soprano Marin Mazzie, a three-time Tony Award nominee known for powerhouse Broadway performances in “Ragtime,” ‘’Passion” and “Kiss Me, Kate,” has died following a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was 57.
Mrs. Mazzie died Thursday at her Manhattan home surrounded by close friends and family, said her husband, actor Jason Danieley. Her death was confirmed by her publicist, Kim Correro.
Tributes came from all across Broadway, including Harvey Fierstein, who wrote, “Beautiful, brave and inspiring. A glorious voice and an even better human being” and Michael Urie, who called Mrs. Mazzie “luminous.” Actor Daniel Dae Kim wrote: “The lights of Broadway all shine a little dimmer tonight.”
Mrs. Mazzie’s broad career went from screwball comedy — in “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Monty Python’s Spamalot” on Broadway and the West End — to riveting, dysfunctional moms in “Next to Normal” and “Carrie.” She earned other Broadway roles in “Man of La Mancha,” “Bullets Over Broadway,” “Enron” and “Into the Woods.”
She found out about her cancer diagnosis on the opening day of a concert production of “Zorba!” in May 2015 and refused to pull out. In one song, she sang: “Life is what you do while you’re waiting to die.”
Mrs. Mazzie later underwent a hysterectomy, a bowel resection because the cancer had spread and weeks of chemotherapy. She returned to Broadway a year later, replacing Kelli O’Hara in “The King and I.”
“It’s very emotional for me,” she told The Associated Press in 2016. “I’m so anxious and excited and thrilled to be able to bring, in essence, a new me back to the stage with what’s gone on in my life.”
The New York Times said Mrs. Mazzie brought “a touch of brass” to the role of English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens. It praised her for a “husky quietness, and you hear the fragile heart beating beneath the stalwartly corseted form.”
Mrs. Mazzie was born and raised in Rockford, Ill., in a home often filled with show tunes and original cast recordings. She attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo to study theater, and her first job was in a musical at a dinner theater in her hometown.
She met her husband, Danieley, in 1996 at the now-defunct theater company En Garde Arts while working on “Trojan Women: A Love Story.” They frequently took their love affair onstage, put out an album of duets, “Opposite You,” in 2005 and appeared together in the autobiographical cabaret show “He Said/She Said.” Mrs. Mazzie and Danieley also starred in Los Angeles productions of “Brigadoon” and a Pasadena production of “110 in the Shade.”
On TV, Mrs. Mazzie appeared in “Without a Trace,” “Still Standing,” “Nurse Jackie,” “The Big C” and “Smash.” Her off-Broadway roles included a revival of the musical “Carrie,” in which The New York Times said she “brings out an unexpected emotional delicacy in her character’s numbers.”
She also is survived by her mother, Donna Mazzie, and brother, Mark Mazzie.