Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to episode 43 of Awards Chatter the

Hollywood Reporters Awards Podcast.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg, and on this episode I am so thrilled to be joined by a living legend, the great actor, Joel Gray.

Gray turns 84 next month, and he has been a performer for virtually all of his life.

Talk about an eclectic body of work.

On Broadway this guy originated the role of George M. Cohen in George M. and the Wizard in Wicked

and he starred in well- received revivals of Chicago and Anything Goes.

Off Broadway he was a part of the original production of the normal heart which he

later co-directed on Broadway. On TV he starred in a host of movies and series and

one fun bit of trivia that's him in the 1991 series finale of Dallas. On the

big screen his credits range from Man on a swing and Buffalo Bill and the Indians or

Sitting Bull's history lesson to the 7% solution and Lars Von Treer's dancer in the dark.

But of course there is one credit above all others that people

associate with Joel Gray and really few actors have ever been as associated with

a single part as Gray is with this one, the MC in Cabaret. He won a Tony for the Broadway version in

1967 and an Oscar for the film version in 1973, which is why it's so appropriate

that his new memoir published last month by flat iron books

is called Master of Ceremonies.

It movingly recounts not only his professional journey but also his personal one, his

difficult childhood, his marriage to actress Joe Wilder, which lasted from

1958 through 1982, their children together, including Chef James and actress Jennifer, who know from among other things dirty dancing

and perhaps most interestingly his inner turmoil over the secret that he kept for the

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