“You know something?” Liza Minnelli once told a reporter. “You can’t be glamorous without being happy, because reality is something you just have to rise above.” The daughter of a movie star, Judy Garland, and a movie director, Vincente Minnelli, she’s lived a life nothing short of extraordinary. Minnelli has spent much of it on set, onstage, in the studio, or out celebrating her work. She’s just about done it all: nightclubs, Cape Cod theater, Broadway, the West End, pop music, the Home Shopping Network, Oscar-nominated movies, and TV shows ranging from Law & Order: Criminal Intent to Arrested Development. She doesn’t just have an EGOT—she has an EGOTTTT. Throw in the Golden Globes, and it’s a GGEGOTTTT. Last June, a documentary about her life, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, premiered to much fanfare. There’s also a memoir in the works, cowritten with her “best friend in the world,” the singer Michael Feinstein, as well as the journalists Josh Getlin and Heidi Evans. At 79 years old, Minnelli’s still dancing almost every day. “When you see me moving gingerly, it’s because I dare not break anything,” she says, “except hearts!”
Minnelli is pictured at age 2, with her mother, Judy Garland, on the set of The Pirate (1948), a movie-musical that starred Garland and was directed by her father, Vincente Minnelli. “Mama knew how to make stardom disappear in public. She’d take me, as a little girl, to Pacific Ocean Park. We’d take rides, eat cotton candy, and she would hold me close,” recalls Minnelli. Backstage, “my mother would be sitting at her dressing table, smelling like heaven and looking gorgeous. Then they would call her to the set, and suddenly she transformed into Judy Garland. No matter how many times I saw the transformation, it always dazzled me.” Minnelli’s film debut came a year later, in 1949, in the final scene of In the Good Old Summertime. “Mama put me on-screen in a movie—with Van Johnson and Buster Keaton, no less!”
Minnelli is pictured with her mother and father around 1952, about a year after they divorced. “Mama used to sing to me at night before she’d tuck me into bed. No matter what other people think, I had a great childhood. Different…still great,” says Minnelli. “Papa was an amazing creative force. I was his princess, and he would consult me…at age 7! ‘Liza?’ he’d ask, before saying ‘Action.’ ‘What should we shoot first?’ Papa actually took my advice.”
Since the moment she was born, Minnelli was surrounded by legendary performers. She was named after a song by her godfather, Ira Gershwin; her godmother, Kay Thompson, the author of the Eloise books, taught her ballet in the Plaza Hotel. Here, she’s pictured with Frank Sinatra, around 1959.
In April 1959, a 13-year-old Minnelli made her TV debut dancing and singing with Gene Kelly on his first-ever TV special. “Gene was virtually a member of our family. In our family albums, there are images of Gene and me from the time I was born until he went to that great dancing stage in the sky. We had a beautiful friendship, and he wasn’t shy about helping me get better,” says Minnelli. For the special, they performed “For Me and My Gal,” a song Kelly initially sang with Garland in the 1942 Busby Berkeley movie-musical of the same name. “Honey, I’ve been twirling ever since.”
Since the 1960s, Minnelli has released 11 studio albums—and she’s currently at work on her 12th. Her fourth, titled simply Liza Minnelli, which she’s pictured holding above, was released in 1968. “My husband [Peter Allen] was a great inspiration for this record. ‘This Girl’s in Love With You’ might seem corny today, but I loved it then and I love it now. We celebrated with champagne, and there were so many parties—unfortunately, there were more parties for the record than sales! It didn’t make the Billboard charts at all. It shook my confidence. Recording was something that never happened for me in a major way. But hey, I’ll be 80 next year. I’m back in the studio, and maybe my next album will be Grandma Liza Boogies On!”
In 1970, when Minnelli was 24, Bert Stern photographed her for Vogue. “I’d been around the most incredible photographers because of my parents, and they were shameless in getting very important people to take pictures of their very unaccomplished daughter—but this shoot was mine. Diana Vreeland believed in me. I felt very grown-up. I’d like to re-create that pose one day.”
Minnelli’s star turn came in 1972, when she played Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse’s version of Cabaret. For the movie, Fosse “used every single part of me…even my scoliosis! We started with an argument, not a celebration. He said, ‘You realize Sally Bowles has to be nude,’ just before we started shooting Cabaret, and I said, ‘Absolutely…but never on camera!’ He said, ‘She has to be.’ I said, ‘She’s not going to be.’ I grabbed him by the shoulders and said, ‘If we fight about this, tomorrow you’ll have to apologize. Don’t let me walk out that door.’ Everything was fantastic after that. He was trying me. I was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I certainly wasn’t dull.”
Filming Cabaret, “we knew we were doing something meaningful. We didn’t know or worry about whether the film was going to be commercial. We had a start-of-shooting party, we had a glorious wrap party, there were parties following each premiere in all the major cities.” Minnelli is pictured with her costar Marisa Berenson at an afterparty for the Paris premiere. “Marisa is one of my dearest friends in the world. We’ve celebrated so many occasions together—yes, the premiere, which was a bit of a blur. Marisa and I can laugh because we finish each other’s sentences.”
Minnelli was a regular at Studio 54 in the 1970s. Here, she’s pictured at the club dancing with Mikhail Baryshnikov. “Sexy, sexy, sexy! Yes, he was…and yes, we did. If I told you it was on a street in New York, would you believe it? If you see Mikhail, blow him…a kiss from me.”
In 1977, Minnelli threw her half sister, Lorna Luft, a 25th-birthday party at Studio 54. The party “was the older sister saying, ‘Baby, you’re all grown up!’ Lorna danced her pretty little ass off that night. No matter what’s going on in my life, she always has my back. When Lorna thought I had partied a little too hard—no, much too hard—she plopped me into Betty Ford with the help of our second mother, Elizabeth Taylor. Let me tell you, going through Betty Ford was no party.”
In 1967, Minnelli married for the first time. Her husband Peter Allen was an Australian singer and songwriter. “Peter is, was, and will always be one of the great loves of my life,” she says. They’re pictured on their honeymoon. “Peter and I were able to sneak away from the press and travel through Florida. We have a heart connection that went on beyond our marriage, beyond his life on Earth, and I know when I join the celestial choir, we’ll be together again. And that’s all I’m gonna tell you!”
The fashion designer Halston was among Minnelli’s best friends. “He was just wonderful. He once said, ‘Liza is always on, and I am always off.’ Even today, I’m still wearing Halston. I’ll probably be buried in Halston! I won’t be cremated. Why ruin a great outfit?”
In December 1971, Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild (far left) and Elizabeth Taylor attended Minnelli’s concert at L’Olympia in Paris. “The baroness was so much more than a socialite and a member of the Rothschild family. She was a very serious person in every way,” says Minnelli. “Elizabeth, I knew all my life. She was literally a dame and a fabulous broad. Elizabeth had it all. The world was wrapped around her little finger.”
In 1973, Minnelli won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Cabaret. Halston made her ensemble for the ceremony “knowing that yellow was my father’s favorite color. When I won, my father screamed so loud that I still have tinnitus!” After the show, “I went to at least four different parties, then the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel for breakfast. It was like the famous picture of Faye Dunaway with her Oscar by the pool there, except I was indoors, starting my morning with a mimosa when I hadn’t been to bed.”
In 1974, Minnelli married her second husband, Jack Haley Jr. They’re pictured celebrating their first anniversary at a party hosted at Halston’s home in New York. “Jack was kind and sweet and warm. We were childhood friends, and we did lots of parties together: our anniversary, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Chasen’s, which was like a second home for us.”
Minnelli celebrated New Year’s Eve in 1977 at Studio 54 with (from left) Halston, Bianca Jagger, Minnelli’s husband Jack Haley Jr., and Andy Warhol. “Halston brought me to Andy’s studio because he wanted Andy to paint me,” she recalls. “I was so grateful when Warhol gave my portraits to me, as well as one of my mother and my father. He didn’t always do that. I remember Elizabeth Taylor being so steamed that I had all of mine, and Elizabeth did not have all of hers. God knows, she didn’t need them! Her jewelry collection alone was like $150 million!”
In 1983, after a show in London, Minnelli went to dinner with (from left) Elton John, Alana and Rod Stewart, and Mark Gero, her third husband. “Mark was an artist, and the carousel of my life spun too fast for him,” says Minnelli. “I was pregnant [here], and we miscarried. It happened three times. So looking at this image, I don’t think about the party. I look at the joy in our eyes, of what was not to be.”
John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the music and lyrics for Minnelli’s second Broadway show, Liza (1974). “Besides all the music they wrote for me—every single one of my anthems— they also created my very favorite song, ‘A Quiet Thing.’ ” Minnelli is pictured doing an interview about Liza, wearing two bone cuffs by Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co. “Let’s get it straight, everybody—I wore the first Elsa Peretti bone cuff! It’s sleek, chic, sexy. All my life, I’ve been surrounded by blue boxes and white ribbons for birthdays.”
In 1978, Minnelli won her second best-leading-actress Tony, for The Act. She’s pictured with her fellow nominees at a Tonys luncheon: (from left) Madeline Kahn, Eartha Kitt, and Frances Sternhagen. “Since I won my first Tony at 19, that particular award always makes me feel young. I remember the dessert from that lunch was chocolate mousse. I dove into the chocolate with gusto! No matter what Shirley MacLaine says, I’ve only lived once and I don’t pass on dessert.”
In 1991, Minnelli and Princess Diana attended an afterparty for a London charity premiere of Minnelli’s movie Stepping Out. “She crept into my heart and stayed there. We would have tea together in Kensington Palace. She was so real, and humble. She was a beautiful soul, much too open, honest, and vulnerable for the harsh realities that she had to face. I cried for 24 hours when she died.”
“I’ve worn other designers, of course, but Halston is the only one who shaped my style,” says Minnelli, pictured with Audrey Hepburn (right) at the 1988 Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards. “I loved Audrey. She was one of the greats. She might not have been a classically trained singer, but she knew how to break your heart, make you laugh and cry.”
Throughout her career, Minnelli has performed in nine Broadway shows. “I used to give Monday night parties at my apartment in New York, because Monday is the dark day—that means the day off for Broadway shows—so everybody came through: Michael Feinstein, Elaine Stritch, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Bob Fosse, Chita Rivera, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Madonna.” In 2008, after a nearly decade-long hiatus, Minnelli returned to Broadway with Liza’s at the Palace. “I loved that show, and I’d do it again, as long as I could do it sitting down!”
In 2024, at the inaugural Industry Dance Awards Gala of the Stars event, Minnelli was honored with a lifetime achievement award. She’s pictured backstage. “I think it’s wonderful to receive awards for things that matter, and dance has always been central to my life. There isn’t a better singer than Mama, or better director than Papa, but one thing I know I can do, and have done, is dance. Honey, I’m never gonna stop dancing. If I can’t do it standing up, I’ll spin in a bleeping wheelchair—with a tall, handsome partner, of course!”
