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<a href="/biography/idina-menzel">Idina Kim Menzel</a> is an <a href="/biography/idina-menzel">actress</a>, singer, and songwriter from the United States. Menzel is noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano voice and characteristic belting technique, and her depictions of strong, complicated female characters often misunderstood. She has won one Tony Award out of three nominations. She is one of the most successful Broadway performers of her generation, having attained mainstream success on stage, screen, and music.

Menzel rose to popularity as a theatrical performer after making her Broadway debut as Maureen Johnson in Rent's rock musical. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance. After appearing in several smaller-scale theatrical and Off-Broadway shows, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elphaba">Elphaba</a> in the Broadway musical Wicked in 2003.

<h2>Background and Early Life</h2>

<a href="/biography/idina-menzel">Idina Kim Mentzel</a> was born in Manhattan, New York City, on May 30, 1971. She lived up in New Jersey until she was around three years old when her family moved to Long Island's Syosset. Helene Goldberg, a therapist, and Stuart Mentzel, a pajama salesman, are her parents. Cara, her younger sister, is her only sibling, and Menzel is a devout <a href="/biography/idina-menzel">follower</a> of the Jewish faith. Her grandfather emigrated from Russia. Menzel went to Plainview's J. Irving Baylis Elementary School, Syosset's H.B. Thompson Middle School, and Syosset High School.

Her parents divorced when she was 15, and she began performing as a wedding and bar mitzvah singer, which she continued during her time at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drama in 1992.

Idina changed the spelling of her surname to "Menzel" to better represent the Mentzel family's pronunciation in the United States. Before they worked together on Rent, she was pals with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Pascal">actor</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Pascal">Adam Pascal</a>.

In 2017, Irish New York-based songwriter Jimmy Walsh disclosed that Menzel recorded a demo for him in 1992 of the song "In Your Eyes," which went on to win the Eurovision Song Contest 1993 for Irish <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niamh_Kavanagh">singer</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niamh_Kavanagh">Niamh Kavanagh</a>. For the recording, Menzel was paid $75.

<h2>Personal Life</h2>

On March 21, 2009, Menzel shared the honorary chair with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John">Elton John</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_LuPone">Patti LuPone</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cameron_Mitchell">John Cameron Mitchell</a>, <a href="/biography/joan-rivers">Joan Rivers</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Strasser">Robin Strasser</a> at the Imperial Court of New York's Annual Charity Coronation Ball, Night of a Thousand Gowns.

Menzel performed in a special benefit event in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 17, 2009, to raise funds for the Pace Academy Diversity Program, which the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Clark_Academy">Ron Clark Academy</a> co-hosted. Two scholarships for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Clark_Academy">Ron Clark Academy</a> students to attend Pace Academy were funded due to the event. Philip McAdoo, a former Rent cast member and current Diversity Program Director at Pace Academy, arranged and hosted the event.

Menzel and her then-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taye_Diggs">husband</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taye_Diggs">Taye Diggs</a> launched the A BroaderWay Foundation to encourage young people in the arts in 2010. A BroaderWay supports summer camps, theatrical workshops, and creative educational programming and provides scholarships and opportunities to see professional productions. In the summer of 2011, Menzel and a team of recognized professional Broadway artists, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taye_Diggs">Taye Diggs</a>, invited girls from underserved metro New York communities to a 10-day performing arts camp. The girls worked with Broadway artists to write an original musical performed at a New York theater during this camp. Belvoir Terrace Summer Camp in Lenox, Massachusetts, hosted the camp.

Menzel has long advocated for LGBT rights, collaborating with organizations such as The Trevor Project, the Give A Damn Campaign (filming a PSA and designing a T-shirt), and the NOH8 Campaign, standing for one of their famous duct-taped silent photographs.

Menzel performed with <a href="/biography/bryan-cranston">Bryan Cranston</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Drescher">Fran Drescher</a>, and <a href="/biography/denzel-washington">Denzel Washington</a> at the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Easter Bonnet Competition in April 2014, after raising funds through her Broadway production If/Then.

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<h2>Career</h2>

Menzel is widely regarded as one of the best Broadway performers of her time, with one of the business's most recognizable and sought-after singing voices. Some media outlets have dubbed her "the Queen of Broadway" as a result of her achievements. Glamour's Jenny Singer called Menzel "one of the greatest musical theater vocalists in history." In contrast, Tribeca Film's Melina Gills called her "an icon and one of the most famous presences on the singing stage." Jim Slotek of the Toronto Sun labeled her "this generation's Broadway icon." Menzel was selected as the top vocalist of 2013 by Cleveland.com's Troy L. Smith in a 2020 retrospective, saying that the year's popularity of "Let it Go" further reinforced her status as "one of Broadway's greatest talents of all time." Menzel was named one of BroadwayWorld's "10 Broadway Stars Who Ruled the Decade" the previous year. Menzel was named the 19th most outstanding female performer on Broadway by Time Out, recognizing that her "stratospheric fame" was built almost exclusively on the success of Rent and Wicked, despite having featured in only one Broadway production since the latter. When it comes to "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, Vulture.com's Jackson McHenry credits Menzel's "pneumatic lungs and the powerhouse performances of the divas that followed" for the song's longevity; McHenry believes few singers can service the ballad as successfully as Menzel's original interpretation. Menzel has a reputation for portraying misunderstood people on stage and screen, and she believes she is drawn to these types of roles. She recognized a similar denominator across the characters she has played: a mix of authority and vulnerability. The Irish Independent says Menzel has become "a go-to actor for producers looking for a feisty female lead," based on her success with Maureen, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elphaba">Elphaba</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_(Frozen)">Elsa</a>. At the same time, Courtney Shea of The Globe and Mail believes she "has made her career playing strong and fantastic females." Menzel argues that while Broadway has always supplied riveting roles for women of various ages, Hollywood is more prone to ageism and misogyny.

Menzel's remarkable transition from theatre to television, film, and music has been widely noted, with Redbook describing her as "one of [Broadway's] major crossover success stories."

Menzel is described as "a stage to film success story" and "the type of star they don't make anymore" in her Starz biography. The original Broadway cast recordings of Rent and If/Then, both of which included Menzel as a soloist, debuted in the Billboard 200's top-20.

Menzel's crossover success "bodes well for Broadway's would-be stars," according to a 2014 Billboard article, while the popularity of "Let it Go" "kicked open the door for future songwriters of stage and screen." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch credited "Let it Go" (and <a href="/biography/john-travolta">Travolta</a>'s mispronunciation of her name) with establishing Menzel as a household figure among theater, television, and film lovers, probably more than her stage credits. When Menzel returned to Broadway in 2014 following the success of Frozen, Billboard's Suzy Evans noted that her reception was more like that of a "rock star" than a theater actor. Menzel's fans have used the term "Fanzels" to describe themselves. Menzel's vast fan base is attributed to his roles in Rent and Wicked, "two era-defying, hugely popular Broadway musicals," according to Isherwood. "There's nothing inauthentic about her performances," Isherwood said. She appears to be a natural person at all times." Sheena McFarland of the Salt Lake Tribune says the singer has had an impact on the globe for more than 20 years, "in every decade since she first stepped foot on the Broadway stage." Because of her outstanding theater career and voice aristocracy in Disney media, the artist has been dubbed "Broadway royalty."

Menzel is widely regarded as a role model for young women because of her portrayal of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_(Frozen)">Elsa</a> in the film Frozen, which has won her a large fan base of primarily female Frozen fans.

She sees her role as a role model as a "reminder to me, as a woman my age, to truly embrace her uniqueness, her strength, and her power and not apologize for it," she adds. However, she has remarked that she does not always feel like a role model in her personal life and that she is uncomfortable bearing the duty at times, claiming that she feels like a failure herself. Menzel has been termed "the voice of the new generation" by Evoke. i.e., 's Diana Bunici. Billboard named Menzel a "Breakthrough Artist" in 2014. "In November 2019, Menzel and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristen_Bell">Kristen Bell</a>, who play sisters in Disney's Frozen franchise, got nearby stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—was Menzel's the 2682nd and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristen_Bell">Bell</a>'s was the 2681st. Menzel is also one of the wealthiest Broadway performers, thanks to her success in television, film, and music.

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