Sutton Foster
Sutton Lenore Foster known as Sutton Foster (born March 18, 1975) is an American actress. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice, in 2002 for her role as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and in 2011 for her performance as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, a role which she reprised in 2021 for a production in London and for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
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Sutton Foster
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| Born |
Sutton Lenore Foster
March 18, 1975 Statesboro, Georgia, U.S.
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| Education | Carnegie Mellon University (One year only) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1989–present |
| Spouses |
Christian Borle
(m. 2006; div. 2009) Ted Griffin
(m. 2014; sep. 2024) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Hunter Foster (brother) |
Her other Broadway credits include Grease, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, The Music Man, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Once Upon a Mattress. On television, Foster played the lead role in the short-lived ABC Family comedy-drama Bunheads from 2012 to 2013. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.
Early life
Sutton Foster was born on March 18, 1975 in Statesboro, Georgia, and raised in Troy, Michigan. At the age of 15, she was a contestant on the reality competition show Star Search and also auditioned for the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club.
She left Troy High School before graduating (she received her diploma via correspondence courses) to join the national tour of The Will Rogers Follies directed by Tommy Tune.
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She then attended Carnegie Mellon University for one year, but left to pursue a theatrical career full-time. In May 2012, she received an honorary doctorate from Ball State University, “in recognition of her outstanding career in theater, television and music and for her contributions to the educational experience and professional growth of Ball State students.” In May 2019, she also received an honorary doctorate from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, which introduced a merit scholarship in her name to be awarded to one student every four years. Her older brother, Hunter Foster, is also an actor.
Personal life
Sutton Foster met actor Christian Borle in college, and married him on September 18, 2006. Although they divorced in 2009, Foster and Borle remain friends and continue to support each other’s work. On September 19, 2013, Foster confirmed she was engaged to screenwriter Ted Griffin. She and Griffin married on October 25, 2014. In April 2017, Foster announced that she and her husband had adopted a baby girl, Emily, born March 5, 2017. Foster filed for divorce from Ted Griffin in October 2024.
Foster is a self-proclaimed dog lover and has had three dogs since her Broadway debut: Linus, Mabel, and Brody.
She makes artwork which she sells online and occasionally at art exhibits. She has collaborated with visual artist Julien Havard, who previously worked as her dresser for nine years, beginning with Thoroughly Modern Millie.
In December 2021, Foster tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to miss performances of The Music Man. Her understudy, Kathy Voytko, stepped in while she was out.
Career
Foster’s breakthrough came in 2000 when she was cast in Thoroughly Modern Millie, a new musical based on the 1967 film about an independent-minded woman in the 1920s. Mere weeks before the show officially opened in La Jolla, California, Foster was promoted from understudy to lead, and she continued in the role when the production relocated to Broadway in early 2002. Although the show earned mixed reviews, Foster’s ability to evince Millie’s gawky charm was often singled out for praise, and her performance was rewarded with the Tony Award for best actress in a musical.
Having demonstrated a talent for musical comedy and a particular flair for ingenue characters, Foster remained on Broadway, originating the roles of Jo in Little Women (2005), an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, and the showgirl Janet Van De Graaff in The Drowsy Chaperone (2006), a spoof of early Broadway musicals. Both performances earned her Tony nominations. Foster then appeared in two new musicals that were based on films, portraying the ditzy lab assistant Inga in Young Frankenstein (2007) and the feisty Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical (2008). For the latter role, she received her fourth Tony nomination.
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After an Off-Broadway detour with the dark comedy Trust (2010), in which she played a dominatrix, Foster took on the part of brassy nightclub singer Reno Sweeney in the 2011 Broadway revival of Cole Porter’s musical Anything Goes, which earned her a second best-actress Tony Award. In the title role of the Broadway musical Violet (2014), Foster portrayed a struggling young woman who bears a horrible scar on her face from a childhood accident.
The musical chronicles Violet’s journey from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Oklahoma, where she believes she will be healed. Foster returned to Off-Broadway in 2016 with a revival of the musical Sweet Charity, in which she starred as a taxi dancer who is unlucky in love. In 2021 she made her West End debut, reprising the role of Reno Sweeney in a London production of Anything Goes. The following year Foster starred with Hugh Jackman in a Broadway revival of The Music Man.
Foster’s admirers often commended her pliant singing voice, which conveyed subtle emotions as effortlessly as it belted out showstoppers. In 2009 she released the album Wish, an intimate collection of show tunes and pop songs. She performed a one-woman cabaret act, which she documented on the recording An Evening with Sutton Foster: Live at the Café Carlyle (2011).
In addition, Foster acted on television, notably in the witty drama Bunheads (2012–13), in which she starred as a small-town ballet teacher, and Younger (2015–21), a comedy about a 40-year-old divorcée who decides to pretend that she is 26. In 2021 Foster published the book Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life (written with Liz Welch), in which she discussed how various hobbies helped her cope with stress and anxiety.
