Tammy Blanchard

Actor

• Born: December 14, 1976
• Place of Birth: Jersey City, New Jersey

Contribution: Tammy Blanchard is an Emmy Award–winning actor best known for her performance as the young Judy Garland in the biopic Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001).

Background

Tammy Jean Blanchard was born on December 14, 1976, in Jersey City, New Jersey, to William Blanchard and Patricia Rettig. She and her two brothers, TJ and William, grew up in the neighboring city of Bayonne. Blanchard’s parents divorced when she was about ten, after which she was raised by her mother. Blanchard has said that her mother made numerous sacrifices to help advance her acting career.

Blanchard attended Mary J. Donohoe Elementary School, where she sang her first solo, “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” the classic ballad from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, at a school assembly program. The extremely positive response to her performance inspired her to pursue a career in acting. When she was thirteen, Blanchard competed in the Miss Teen New Jersey pageant, where she was discovered by a manager. The manager referred her to a talent agency, which signed her and began sending her on commercial auditions.

While attending Bayonne High School, Blanchard appeared in commercials, modeled for several teen magazines, and auditioned for parts in films and television shows. She also acted in plays and musicals, eventually portraying Dorothy Gale in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. She graduated from Bayonne High in 1994.

Career

Blanchard spent several years on the audition circuit before winning the role of anguished teen Drew Jacobs on CBS’s long-running daytime soap opera Guiding Light in 1997. She appeared on the show for three years, during which she honed her acting craft under the tutelage of costar Patti D’Arbanville, who portrayed her character’s biological mother.

In 2001, following her stint on Guiding Light, Blanchard secured her breakthrough role as the young Judy Garland in the biopic Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, which aired on the television network ABC. Divided into two parts and based on an autobiography written by Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft, the film chronicles Garland’s rise to fame as a child actress in the 1930s, including her iconic role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and her eventual drug-induced fall from grace and premature death in the 1960s. Blanchard garnered widespread critical acclaim for her portrayal of a young and insecure Garland, ultimately winning the Emmy Award for best supporting actress in a miniseries or a movie. She also received Golden Globe and American Film Institute Award nominations for her performance.

Blanchard’s award-winning turn as Garland also garnered her significant attention from Hollywood talent agencies, and she signed a representation deal with International Creative Management (now known as ICM Partners) in 2002. That year Blanchard made her feature-film debut in the crime comedy Stealing Harvard (2002) and costarred alongside Beau Bridges and Blythe Danner in the Lifetime made-for-television drama We Were the Mulvaneys (2002).

Blanchard next conquered Broadway in Academy Award–winning director Sam Mendes’s revival of the musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable, based on the memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, which opened in May 2003. She played the titular role of Gypsy opposite Bernadette Peters, who played her mother, Rose. For her performance, she earned a Tony Award nomination and a Theatre World Award for best actress in a musical.

After a year-long run in Gypsy, Blanchard alternated between a series of television and film roles. She played a young heroine, Sally Reid, in the whimsical CBS holiday film When Angels Come to Town (2004) and was then cast as Matt Damon’s deaf lover in The Good Shepherd (2006), an epic spy drama directed by Robert De Niro and featuring an all-star cast. Also in 2006 she starred as a lovelorn New York City waitress in the independent feature Bella.

Blanchard worked with a number of well-known actors, playing the title character opposite Jessica Lange in the CBS remake of Sybil (2007), appearing alongside Adrien Brody in the musical biopic Cadillac Records (2008), and playing Nicole Kidman’s sister in the drama Rabbit Hole (2010). In 2011, she starred with Mira Sorvino in the independent film Union Square, directed and cowritten by Nancy Savoca, and played a baseball wife in the Brad Pitt–headlined sports drama Moneyball.

Meanwhile, Blanchard returned to Broadway in director and choreographer Rob Ashford’s fiftieth-anniversary revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, in which she played the sultry secretary Hedy La Rue. The musical opened in March 2011 to positive reviews, and Blanchard earned her second career Tony Award nomination for her performance. Blanchard followed her run in How to Succeed with a recurring role in the Showtime series The Big C in 2012. She went on to appear in the drama Blue Jasmine (2013), written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin.

Blanchard continued to work primarily in film and theater. Notably, she played Cinderella's stepsister Florinda in the Disney film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Into the Woods (2014). The following year she performed in the Off-Broadway production Dada Woof Papa Hot. In 2016 Blanchard starred as Eden in the acclaimed psychological thriller The Invitation and earned praise for her performance as dissatisfied homemaker Carolyn in the well-received family drama Tallulah, a Netflix production that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Blanchard went on to star as Caroline Marrow in the thriller Beyond the Night (2018). That year she briefly returned to Broadway, playing Cora in a Tony-nominated revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

During this period Blanchard also guest-starred in a number of television shows, including Elementary, Bull, Billions, and Blue Bloods. She landed a story arc on Daytime Divas in 2017 and later joined the regular cast of the crime drama Dare Me, an adaptation of the Megan Abbott novel of the same name. The first nine-episode season of Dare Me debuted in 2019.

That same year, Blanchard played the character of Audrey in the off-Broadway revival of the musical, Little Shop of Horrors. She also starred in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, about iconic children’s TV host Fred Rogers. In 2023, she starred in the psychological thriller Bibi, and, a year later, she appeared in the TV miniseries Aaron Hernandez: American Sports Story, about a former NFL player who was convicted of murder.

Impact

Blanchard is part of a so-called sisterhood of actresses who have received accolades for their portrayals of Judy Garland, one of the most beloved Hollywood icons of the twentieth century. Although Blanchard is best known for her performance as Garland, she has proven herself to be a highly versatile actor capable of working in a variety of genres and mediums, from independent films and mainstream Hollywood features to large-scale Broadway musicals.

Personal Life

Blanchard has a daughter, Ava, who was named after legendary actress Ava Gardner.

Bibliography

Blake, Leslie. “INTERVIEW: Tammy Blanchard Moves into Union Square.” TheaterMania, 14 July 2012, www.theatermania.com/news/interview-tammy-blanchard-moves-into-union-square‗59363/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Carucci, John, and Mark Kennedy. “Tammy Blanchard: ‘Not Uptight about Anything.’” Deseret News, 12 July 2012, www.deseret.com/2012/7/12/20423702/tammy-blanchard-not-uptight-about-anything/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Cerbo, Toni-Ann. “Bayonne Native and Emmy Award Winner Tammy Blanchard Returns to Broadway.” NJ.com, 25 Mar. 2011, www.nj.com/bayonne/2011/03/bayonne‗native‗and‗emmy‗award.html. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Gans, Andrew. “DIVA TALK: Chatting with How to Succeed’s Tammy Blanchard.” Playbill, 18 Feb. 2011, playbill.com/article/diva-talk-chatting-with-how-to-succeeds-tammy-blanchard-com-176325. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

"Tammy Blanchard." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0087109/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.