Julie Halston

Julie Halston (born December 7, 1954) is an American actress and comedian who appeared on television, film, and theatre. She received four Drama Desk Award nominations for her Broadway performances, and in 2020 was awarded Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 74th Tony Awards. On television, Halston best-known for playing socialite Bitsy von Muffling in the HBO comedy series, Sex and The City, its film continuation, and the sequel series, And Just Like That.... Early life and education Halston was born in Flushing, Queens. Her parents, Rudolph "Rudy" Abatelli and Julia Madeline "Dolly" (née Gardner) moved to Commack, Long Island, when Halston was four years old. After attending a Catholic high school, she graduated from Hofstra University, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre arts. Career Halston first achieved recognition as an actress through her co-starring performances in the comedy plays of writer-performer, Charles Busch in the 1980s in New York City. She was a founding member of his theatre company, Theatre-in-Limbo, which along with other writers and performers such as Charles Ludlam, Lypsinka, Ann Magnuson, and John Fleck, to name a few, were part of a cultural movement that helped revitalize the Off-Broadway theatre. Busch considered Halston his muse and wrote many roles for her in his plays including Vampire Lesbians of Sodom (1984),The Lady in Question (1989), Red Scare on Sunset (1991), You Should be so Lucky (1994), The Divine Sister (2011), The Tribute Artist (2013). She wrote a series of one-woman comedy shows that eventually led to a successful Off-Broadway production entitled Julie Halston's Lifetime of Comedy (1992). The show earned her an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Best Play and landed Halston a CBS network development deal. The pilot was called Those Two and co-starred Harvey Fierstein. It was written by Bob Randall, the co-producer of Kate and Allie. The show was not developed into a series and Halston returned to the stage and subsequently appeared in many Off-Broadway and Broadway shows including The Man Who Came to Dinner (2000), The Women (2001), Hairspray (2002), Gypsy (2003), Twentieth Century (2004), Anything Goes (2012-replacement), You Can't Take it with You (2014), On The Town (2015), and Tootsie (2019).