Los Angeles: Soprano Rebecca Luker, a three-time ‘Tony’ nominated actor who starred in some of the biggest Broadway hits of the past three decades, died Wednesday. She was 59. Rebecca Luker’s death was announced by her husband, veteran Broadway actor Danny Burstein. He said in a statement ‘our family is devastated. I have no words at this moment because I’m numb’.
Luker went public in 2020 saying she had been diagnosed with Lou Gehri’s disease, also called ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Luker was a best actress Tony nominee in 1995 playing Magnolia in Showboat, a best actress nominee in 2000 for playing ‘Marian’ in The Music Man opposite Craig Bierko, and a best featured actress nominee in 2007 as Winifred Banks in Mary Poppins.
Tributes flooded social media, including from Broadway stars like Laura Benanti. She called Luker ‘humble, loving and kind’ with a ‘golden voice’ that would ‘wrap you in peace’.
Seth Rudetsky said it was ‘a great loss for Broadway and the world’. Kristin Chenoweth tweeted that Luker was ‘one of the main reasons I wanted to be a soprano’. Bernadette Peters called her ‘one of the most beautiful voices on Broadway and a lovely person’.
Luker was known for staying with shows for extended runs. “Yes, I’m the queen of long runs,” she told the ‘Connecticut Post’ in 2011. “I don’t know if I’m lucky or if it’s a curse. But it’s just how things have happened for me and it is mostly a good thing.”
In addition to many stage credits, Luker appeared on TV in Boardwalk Empire and The Good Wife and in the 2012 film Not Fade Away.
Luker and her husband starred in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in which they played the parents of a transgender youngster killed in an accident after being bullied.
Luker was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and received a bachelor’s in music from the University of Montevallo, where she later was awarded an honorary doctorate.
Her final stage role was playing a small-town minister’s narrow-minded wife in a 2019 Kennedy Center production of Footloose. Her last performance was in June in a ‘Zoom’ benefit performance, At Home With Rebecca Luker.
In addition to her husband, Luker is survived by two stepsons, Alex and Zach.