Caissie Levy

Origins and early life

Caissie Shira Levy was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on 15 April 1981, the daughter of Mark Levy, a family doctor, and of Lisa Levy, who worked as an administrator in his practice, and the younger sister of two brothers who became filmmakers. Both her parents are Jewish, and she grew up in what she calls a pretty traditional household, went to Jewish day school until grade eight, spent her childhood summers at Camp Ramah and still speaks Hebrew.

After Westdale Secondary School she trained at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York, and a week after graduating, in 2002, she was cast as Maureen in the touring production of Rent, before reaching Broadway in Hairspray and Wicked.

Work and career

In 2009 she played Sheila in the Broadway revival of Hair, which she took on to London, and in 2011 she created the role of Molly Jensen in Ghost, first in Manchester and the West End and then, in 2012, on Broadway. She was Fantine in the 2014 Broadway revival of Les Misérables, and in 2018 she opened on Broadway as Elsa in Disney's stage version of Frozen, a part she had created in Denver the year before and played for two years.

In 2021 she played Rose Stopnick Gellman, in whom she sees the spirit of a New York Jewish woman, in the Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change, whose cast album brought her a Grammy nomination, and her Diana Goodman in Next to Normal in London earned her an Olivier nomination. Now the mother of two, she says she marks Shabbat with her children when she can before leaving for the theatre, and that theirs is a very, very Jewish family.

On 7 June 2026, at the 79th Tony Awards, she won best actress in a musical as Mother in Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Ragtime, at her first nomination and for her first win. Accepting it, she said she had grown up in Canada watching the Tonys and dreaming of a life on Broadway.