Stars From Jennifer Hudson to Allison Janney on Their Favorite Musicals

“Singin’ in the Rain is pretty hard to surpass,” says the actor, who plays Director Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. “Grease is awesome. Most of Vincente Minnelli’s stuff is brilliant. For ‘modern’ ones that are fun, well, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.“

“My favorite musical would have to be Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods,” says the actress, who plays Scarlett on TV’s Nashville. “It is all about fear and what it makes people do, and who sticks together and who doesn’t, and the embarrassing and sometimes incredibly brave things that we do when we’re frightened. It’s been my favorite since I was 10.”

“I was named after my grandma Isabel, but my mom got the idea for the name Iliza from My Fair Lady,” says Shlesinger, who stars in ABC’s streaming comedy series Forever 31. “My mom used to take us to musicals on Broadway, so I grew up seeing Guys and Dolls and The Phantom of the Opera and everybody watched The Music Man.”

“Obviously, Dreamgirls is my favorite!“ says Hudson, who won an Oscar for her role in Dreamgirls (2006). 

“The first play I ever did was Fiddler on the Roof when I was 12,” says Sedgwick, currently appearing in the movie The Edge of Seventeen. “The most surprising and inspirational musicals I’ve seen in a really long time are Rent and Spring Awakening.”

“My favorite musical in my whole life is Man of La Mancha,” says Sheen, who played Matthew Cuthbert in the recent PBS presentation of Anne of Green Gables. “The music caught the story and that character in a way that brought him into the modern world and gave him a place that is enchanting and inspiring.”

"When I was growing up, my favorite musical was The Music Man, the movie with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. I just thought it was wonderful," says Jane Lynch, the star of Mascots. "I haven’t done it in a long time, but on the 4th of July because it’s very Americana, I would watch The Music Man. Then, I did Annie on Broadway three years ago, and, of course, I was on Glee. How more musical can you get?"

"I’ve never starred in a musical, although I did go to a performing arts high school for musical theater, Orange County School of the Arts. But I love musical theater," says Jodie Sweetin, star of Fuller House. "I saw Hamilton when I was in New York this past February, and that now has taken the place for my all-time favorite musical. Absolutely brilliant. I’m a huge fan of Stephen Sondheim, and I love Into the Woods, the original musical. The movie was great, but the original musical for me was something that I saw over and over again as a child."

"I grew up watching The Sound of Music. I think we owned it, so I saw it 20 or 30 times. That is still my favorite musical. Julie Andrews and the whole cast are so talented. I love musical theater," says Darby Stanchfield of Scandal.

"I recently saw The Color Purple with Cynthia Erivo and Heather Headley and it was absolutely astounding to see those actresses do what they did on stage. I felt so much I thought I was going to explode," says Bull's Geneva Carr. When I was young, I saw The Sound of Music on TV and seeing Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer touched a very tender part of me and I wanted to fall in love. The two of them together, it’s electric. It was so risqué, I can’t believe as a kid I saw that. It’s like they have their clothes on but my kicks got revved.

"When I was growing up, they made the movie of Chorus Line, and I just loved that movie. I also loved Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews. Wasn’t it amazing? That blew my mind also when I was a kid," says Julianne Nicholson of Eyewitness. "Also, when I was older and an actor, I loved the stage version of Cabaret because it was very exciting to me that you didn’t have to look like someone in Chorus Line to be in a musical."