DAME EDNA (Dame Edna
Everage) is probably the most popular and gifted woman in the
world today. Housewife, investigative journalist, social anthropologist,
talk-show host, swami, children’s book illustrator, megastar, celebrity spin
doctor and icon. With Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Dame
Joan Sutherland, she is the most prominent of a remarkable succession of female
stars to emerge from Australia. During the 1970s, Dame Edna’s success in her
homeland was repeated in Britain with London stage shows including Housewife
Superstar! and A Night With Dame
Edna. Subsequently, she performed at
London’s Royal Albert Hall and at the prestigious Theatre Royal Drury Lane and
the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Television triumphs include two critically acclaimed
UK specials, "An Audience With Dame Edna" and "Another Audience With Dame
Edna." She also hosted two series of her own innovative chat show, "The Dame
Edna Experience." Her guests
included Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Liza Minnelli, Sean Connery, Caesar
Romero and Mel Gibson. Most recently, on Broadway, her sensational vehicle, Dame
Edna: The Royal Tour, received a
Special Tony Award for Live Theatrical Event. The Outer Critics Circle also
bestowed upon her a Special Achievement Award. Dame Edna has recorded numerous
TV specials, the last of which, "A Night on Mount Edna," won the foremost
European entertainment award, the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1991. Edna’s other
notable awards include first prize in the San Francisco International Film Festival,
a Gold Award at the New York Film and TV Festival and a British Academy Award
nomination for "The Dame Edna Experience." Her books include Dame Edna’s
Coffee Table Book, Dame Edna’s
Bedside Companion and her seminal
autobiography, My Gorgeous Life,
which has been translated into many languages and, on government orders, has
been placed in hotel bedrooms throughout Britain and Australia. Possibly
Jewish, Dame Edna is a widow, with three grown children. She spends her time
visiting world leaders, photographing
orphans and jetsetting between her homes in Malibu, Mayfair, Melbourne,
Montreux and Martha’s Vineyard. She is the founder and governor of "Friends of
the Prostate" and the creator of the World Prostate Olympics. Currently, she is
turning her attention to the deviated septum. Recently she starred in David E.
Kelley’s cutting-edge TV series, "Ally McBeal," where her abilities as a
distinguished actress were at last recognized, as they were in the film Nicholas
Nickleby in which she played Mrs.
Crummles opposite Nathan Lane. Dame Edna has appeared regularly on "The Tonight
Show With Jay Leno" and did the Millennium Countdown in Times Square for the
program a few years ago. Among her many achievements, Dame Edna has changed the
course of the traditional talk show and contributed, free of charge, some of
the more amusing lines in the recent production of The Boy From Oz. She returns to the American stage at a time when
her gifts of compassion are most needed, and she wishes to thank nobody but
herself!