An Evening with Joel Grey

In a career that was launched in the early 1950s, Joel Grey has created indelible stage roles each decade since. Grey made his theatrical debut at the age of nine in On Borrowed Time at the storied American regional theatre, Cleveland Play House. He recently directed a production of the play at New Jersey's Two River Theater Company for their 20th Anniversary Season. He made his Broadway debut exactly two decades after his Cleveland debut in Neil Simon's first comedy hit, Come Blow Your Horn (1961).  Since then, his Broadway credits include Stop the World I Want to Get Off, Half a Sixpence, Cabaret (Tony Award), George M! (Tony nomination), Goodtime Charley (Tony nomination), The Grand Tour (Tony nomination), Chicago (Drama Desk Award), Wicked, Anything Goes, and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Grey's dramatic stage roles include Marco Polo Sings a Solo, Give Me Your Answer, Do! (Drama Desk nomination), New York City Opera's Silverlake (directed by Hal Prince) and Larry Kramer's seminal The Normal Heart at the Public Theatre, which he also subsequently co-directed with George C. Wolfe in its Tony Award-winning Broadway premiere (Drama Desk Award, Tony nomination).  

Grey received the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the British Academy Award for his performance in the 1972 film version of Cabaret (directed by Bob Fosse). He is one of only nine actors to have won both the Tony and Academy Award for the same role. Other film credits include Man on A Swing, Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Seven Percent Solution, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Steven Soderbergh's Kafka, Altman's The Player, The Music of Chance, Michael Ritchie's adaptation of The Fantasticks, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark and Clark Gregg's Choke. Notable television appearances include Brooklyn Bridge (Emmy nomination), OZ, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, House, Brothers & Sisters, Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, Nurse Jackie, Warehouse 13, and CSI. In 2010, Grey was honored for his illustrious television career by The Paley Center for Media in both NYC and Los Angeles.  

Grey is also an accomplished photographer. He has five books of photographs: Pictures I Had to Take (2003), Looking Hard at Unexamined Things (2006), 1.3 - Images From My Phone (2009), The Billboard Papers (2013) and The Flower Whisperer. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. His memoir, Master of Ceremonies, was published in February 2016 (Flatiron). 

Grey most recently directed the acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish which won the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Best Musical Revival, the 2019 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Revival, and a 2019 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Special Citation. He can currently be seen on the GX/Hulu series The Old Man.

Joel Grey is the father of Jennifer and James and the grandfather of Stella.