Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring here some brief bios on famous New Yorkers in different areas: music, sports, film and theater, authors. Our first column spotlights New Yorkers appearing on Broadway.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

McGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Photo: Richard Phibbs

Currently starring alongside Ewan McGregor and Cynthia Nixon in Broadway’s The Real Thing, Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t initially drawn to the stage. Born in the Lower East Side to parents in the entertainment industry (mom Naomi Finer was an Oscar-nominated TV producer; dad, Stephen Gyllenhaal, an Emmy-nominated film director), the family (which also includes actor/brother Jake Gyllenhaal) moved early on for a time to Los Angeles, California.

Making her film debut in 1992’s Waterland, Gyllenhaal later got a chance to act alongside brother Jake (portraying sibs) in the 2001 cult film classic Donnie Darko. By then, she’d moved back to New York City and attended Columbia University. The following year, Gyllenhaal stepped up the heat on-screen with James Spader in the BDSM film Secretary (2002).

Gyllenhaal developed a reputation as a serious actress, starring alongside Meryl Streep in Adaptation, and later earning a Golden globe nomination for her gutsy role as a drugged out mother trying to get on the right track in the 2006 independent film SherryBaby. She earned her first Academy award nomination in 2009, portraying a journalist/single mother who gets romantically entangled with Jeff Bridges’ washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart.

Gyllenhaal lives in Brooklyn with actor/husband Peter Sarsgaard. They have two daughters. The couple even starred together in the play Three Sisters. She can also be currently seen in the Showtime TV series An Honorable Woman.

Idina Menzel

Photo: Joan Marcus

Idina Menzel’s character Elizabeth in Broadway's If/Then, about the different choices a woman can make in life, certainly resonates with many. Getting her start singing at local bar/bat mitzvahs in high school, Menzel, born in Syosset, NY, earned her BFA at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She got her big break in the 1996 production Broadway show Rent, the long-running rock musical about life in NYC during the 1980s, for which she earned her first Tony nomination. There, Menzel met and later married actor/singer Taye Diggs. The two divorced in 2013 and have a son.

In 2003, Menzel returned to Broadway and scored her first Tony for Best Actress as Elphaba, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the West, in Wicked. She began to break into film and television, starring in the the film version of Rent in 2005 and in 2007's Enchanted.

In 2013, Menzel’s performance of “Let It Go,” the theme song from Disney’s Frozen, climbed the Billboard charts. Menzel took John Travolta’s mispronunciation of her name in stride when he introduced her to perform the song at the 2014 Academy Awards.

Matthew Broderick

Photo: F. Scott Schafer

Still holding onto his boyish looks at 52, lifelong New Yorker Matthew Broderick is no stranger to Broadway. He enjoyed long-running success pairing with Nathan Lane in both the Broadway and film version of Mel Brooks’ The Producers (thought nominated for a Best Actor Tony in 2001, Broderick lost to Lane.) The two are together once more in It’s Only a Play, along with Stockard Channing and Rupert Grint (the Harry Potter alum is making his Broadway debut).

Broderick was born in New York City to a playwright/painter mother and an actor father. After a knee injury shut down his athletic pursuits at 17, his dad helped him land his first role in a workshop production of On Valentine’s Day. He studied drama at the HB Studio in Greenwich Village and made his big-screen debut in 1983's War Games. Broderick was offered the chance to play Alex P. Keaton in the sitcom Family Ties, but didn’t want to commit to a TV show. The role ended up being owned by Michael J. Fox.

He later performed in the play and film versions of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (for which he won his first Tony in 1983) and the film version of Simon’s Biloxi Blues. He won his second Tony in 1995 in a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Broderick has been immortalized as the life-affirming, hooky-playing high school senior, Ferris Bueller, in John Hughes’ 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He is married to Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker. The couple has two children and lives in Manhattan; they once hosted a 2012 fundraiser dinner for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Tony Danza

Photo: Matt Hoyle

In earlier years, Brooklynite Tony Danza was interested in becoming the next Rocky Graciano. He got a wrestling scholarship to Iowa's University of Dubuque, where he earned his BA in history education. Then, in 1975, he changed his name to “Dangerous” Tony Danza and began a career in boxing, entering the New York Golden Gloves competition as a middleweight. He quickly became a crowd favorite.

He got his TV break on the show Taxi (1978-1982), driving alongside Judd Hirsch, Danny DeVito, Andy Kaufman, and Marilu Henner. While he had a good track record of boxing knockouts, he couldn’t secure a title shot. He then changed career trajectories and went full on into acting.

It was his onscreen chemistry with Judith Light and Alyssa Milano in the sitcom Who’s the Boss (1984-1992) that really made Tony Danza a household name. He later returned to the stage, with a star turn in Mel Brooks’ The Producers. He even did a stint as a talk show host (The Tony Danza Show, 2004-2006) and used his degree to teach high school English in Philadelphia, documented on A&E’s Teach. Danza is currently starring on Broadway in Honeymoon in Vegas, based on the 1992 film.

Alan Alda

Currently starring with Candice Bergen in the Broadway show Love Letters, Alan Alda is best known for his role as surgeon with a heart, Hawkeye, in the long-running TV series about the Korean War, M*A*S*H (1972-1983), which earned him more than 20 Emmy nominations, in not only the category of outstanding lead actor but also outstanding directing and writing.

Born Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo in New York City, son of actor Robert Alda, he first got the itch to act as a teen, performing in summer stock theater in Pennsylvania. He made his Broadway debut in 1959 in Only in America.

During his long run on M*A*S*H, Alda worked in films, including Neil Simon’s California Suite with Jane Fonda, and wrote/starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan with Meryl Streep. He also starred in the dramatic comedy The Four Seasons with Carol Burnett.

After M*A*S*H ended, Alda focused on film, including major roles in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan Murder Mystery. He later returned to Broadway, performing in Glengarry Glen Ross. He also wrote two memoirs. He’s recently appeared on Showtime’s The Big C with Laura Linney and has hosted PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers for more than 10 years.