Elaine May Finally Gets a Tony, but Her Road Here Wasn’t Easy

There’s a first time for everything, as Elaine May can surely attest. The star won Leading Actress in a Play at the Tony Awards on June 9, her first official acting honor—ever. May snagged the statuette for her portrayal of Gladys Green, an attorney and activist battling dementia in The Waverly Gallery (besting the likes of Annette Benning and Laurie Metcalf). She’d waited long enough: May made her stage debut at age three, in her parents Yiddish theater troupe, and she’s now 87, so you do the math.

“The only safe thing is to take a chance,” May has said. 

Though May initially rose to fame in the 1950s, performing with her comedy partner Mike Nichols, many remember her most for her work as a writer and director. She hit big in the 1970s with The Heartbreak Kid and Heaven Can Wait, for which she and co-writer Warren Beatty shared an Oscar nomination. Things went seriously south, however, when her bleak buddy movie Mikey and Nicky tanked; her next collaboration with Beatty was the catastrophic 1980s flop Ishtar.