Lorna Luft biography

in 1985. The series, unfortunately, was canceled at the end of that season. More successful with her stage career, Luft found work in regional productions and national tours. In 1990, she spent several weeks on the U.S. tour for Jerry Herman’s Broadway Years. Luft then took on Hollywood & Broadway two years later for a tour through Europe and Britain. Taking the lead role of Miss Adelaide, she spent almost two years on the road,

performing Guys and Dolls.

Personal Issues

Deciding to share her experiences as the daughter of a musical legend, Luft wrote her autobiography, Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir, which was published in 1998. The book led to a falling out between Lorna and her father Sid Luft. And the father-daughter conflict only heightened in 2001 when the miniseries Me and My Shadows: My Life with Judy Garland aired. Lorna was very pleased by the adaptation of her book and by Judy Davis’s portrayal of her mother, but her father was incensed, claiming that the miniseries was filled with lies.

Her relationship with her half-sister Liza has been volatile as well. They were close for many years, even singing together at the 1993 Tony Awards in New York. But Luft told People magazine in 1998 that the two have become estranged over Minnelli’s “self-destructive behavior.”

In 2004, Luft premiered her one-woman show, Songs My Mother Taught Me, in London. She has since toured several times with the production, which is meant to be a celebration of her mother’s most famous songs. Luft puts her own spin on such Garland standards as “The Man That Got Away” and “Chicago.” An album of the music from the show, Songs My Mother Taught Me, was released in 2007.

Lorna has two children, Jesse and Vanessa, from her first marriage to musician John Hooker. Married to musical director Colin Freeman since 1996, she divides her time between Los Angeles and the United Kingdom.

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