MY LIFE IN

GROWING UP in Princeton, N.J., Beatrice Neuwirth admitted, “I was a bum in school; I didn’t do any work. I drove my parents crazy.” But seeing the musical Pippin when she was 13, “That’s the thing that changed my direction.” She came away thinking, I can do that. And since her Broadway debut in A Chorus Line at 19, she’s done that and more, including winning a pair of Tonys and Emmys. Yet Bebe, who turns 60 on Dec. 31, admits, “Rarely have I ever decided to do anything in my life, or in my career. I like to think of it as a Zen progression, of things happening and unfolding in a natural way .... There’s absolutely been many heartbreaks and setbacks, but things just unfold.”