Her death was announced by her husband, veteran Broadway actor Danny Burstein, who said in a statement “our family is devastated. I have no words at this time because I am numb.” Luker went public in 2020 saying she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, also called ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Luker was nominated for Best Actress by Tony in 1995, playing Magnolia in “Showboat,” Best Actress nominated in 2000 for her role as Marian in “The Music Man” opposite Craig Bierko and Best Actress nominated in 2007 as Winifred Banks in “Mary Poppins.”
Tributes have flooded social media, including from Broadway celebrities such as Laura Benanti, who called Luker “humble, loving and kind” in a “golden voice” that “will wrap you in peace.” Seth Rudetsky said it was “a great loss to Broadway and the world.” Kristin Chenoweth wrote on Twitter that Luker was “one of the main reasons I wanted to be a soprano,” and Bernadette Peters called her “one of the most beautiful voices on Broadway and a wonderful person.”
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Luker was known for staying with long running shows. “Yes, I’m the queen of long races,” she told the Connecticut Post in 2011. “I don’t know if I’m lucky or if it’s a curse. But that’s how things happened to me and it’s especially good. “
In 2013, he appeared in an off-Broadway rebirth of Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion.” In addition to many stage credits, Luker appeared on television in “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Good Wife” and in the 2012 film “Not Fade Away.” His other off-Broadway credits include “Death Takes a Holiday,” “Indian Blood” and “The Vagina Monologues.”
Broadway stars Stephanie J. Block called Luker “an angel’s face and an angel’s spirit,” and LaChanze took to Twitter to call Luker’s death “a huge loss to American theater.” Michael Cerveris, the winner of Tony, said: “There was no one more humble, more unexpectedly funny or more glorious when he sang.”
Luker and her husband starred in an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” in which they played the parents of a young transgender man killed in an accident after being assaulted.
Luker was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and received a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Montevallo, where he later received an honorary doctorate.
Luker made his Broadway debut in 1988 in “The Phantom of the Opera” first as a student at Sarah Brightman and then as Christine, alongside the legendary Michael Crawford. “I will never forget it. It was an out-of-body experience. However, it was so kind and I will never forget it,” she told Playbill in 2016.
She starred on Broadway in “The Sound of Music” and as the original Lily in “The Secret Garden.” She was a replacement in “Nine” in 2003 with Antonio Banderas, “Fun Home” in 2016 and in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” in 2013-14.
His albums include “Greenwich Time”, “Leaving Home”, “Anything Goes: Rebecca Luker Sings Cole Porter” and “I Got Love: Songs of Jerome Kern”, with 14 classics from Bill / Can’t Help Loving That Man ”to“ My Husband’s First Wife ”. He also paid tribute to the legendary Barbara Cook at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors.
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Her final stage role was playing the wife of the minister of a small town in a 2019 production of the Kennedy Center in “Footloose”. Her last performance was in June in a Zoom benefit show, “Home with Rebecca Luker.”
In addition to her husband, Luker is survived by two stepchildren, Alex and Zach.
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