Beanie Feldstein

Name at birth: Elizabeth Greer Feldstein

Beanie Feldstein is the comic actress who played Fanny Brice in the show Funny Girl on Broadway in 2022. Elizabeth Feldstein was born in Los Angeles in 1993. She was one of three children who made their way into entertainment: her brother Jonah Hill (b. 1983) is an actor, and her eldest brother Jordan Feldstein (1977-2017) managed the rock band Maroon 5. She got the nickname 'Beanie' from a British nanny as a toddler. Beanie Feldstein's first TV appearance was a small part on the show My Wife and Kids in 2002, and in high school she was in the pilot for a Disney Channel TV show, Madison High. She graduated from Wesleyan College in 2015 with a degree in sociology. She got into TV acting right away, with a bit role on Orange Is the New Black (2015) and a recurring role on the vampire comedy What We Do In the Shadows (2019). She earned good notices in supporting roles in the comedy Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016) and the sullen drama Lady Bird (2017), before landing the leads in the coming-of-age comedies Booksmart (2019) and How to Build a Girl (2019). Feldstein also played White House intern Monica Lewinsky (with Clive Owen as President Bill Clinton) in the 2021 TV series Impeachment: American Crime Story. Her casting in, and departure from, the Broadway musical Funny Girl in 2022 prompted one of that year's great theater kerfuffles. The original 1960s production made a star of Barbra Streisand; Feldstein had been "weirdly obsessed with Barbra Streisand growing up" and "super into musicals," she told the Wesleyan Argus in 2015. The Funny Girl revival launched in April of 2022, with Feldstein as the star, but mixed reviews and sagging ticket sales prompted producers to get restless. Feldstein announced in July that she would leave the show at the end of the month, saying that producers had "decided to take the show in a different direction." Glee star Lea Michele was quickly announced as her replacement, prompting outrage, delight, and endless gossip among theater aficionados.