Lauri Peters (born Patricia Peterson; July 2, 1943) is an American actress, dancer, singer, drama teacher, and author.

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (April 2009)

Career

Peters created the role of Liesl Von Trapp in the original 1959 Broadway production of The Sound of Music. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical, which she shared with her sibling castmates. She was married to actor Jon Voight (1962–67), whom she met when he joined the cast as Nazi messenger boy Rolfe, with whom Liesl shares a song ("Sixteen Going on Seventeen") and an attraction. She can be heard on the show's cast album, which has sold more than three million copies in the US.

In Britain, she is probably best known as Cliff Richard's romantic lead in the 1963 film Summer Holiday. On film, she also acted alongside Fabian, James Stewart, and Sidney Poitier.

She appeared as Moll in the revival of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock directed by Howard Da Silva.

Although she worked primarily in the theater, on and off Broadway, and in touring companies, she also appeared on popular television shows of the 1960s and '70s, including Gunsmoke, where she was featured as “Allie”, an innocent girl stuck in a poor family of eight (with a father and brother who were future-less lazy, whiners), yet she somehow remained kind and caring, as well as falling hard for her heartthrob, Marshall Dillon in the episode “Take Her, She’s Cheap” (S10E6).

That was after her first starring role on Gunsmoke in 1964 (S9E20) as the title character “Mayblossom”, portraying Festus’s cousin (who was promised to him for marriage), but who also falls prey to being violated by a townsman.

With acting teacher Sanford Meisner, Peters founded the Meisner Extension at New York University in 1993, where she was artistic director and master teacher. Teaching the technique away from Manhattan, she has written a book on Meisner.^{[citation needed]}

Musical theatre

• 1959 First Impressions
• 1959 Sound of Music as Liesl Von Trapp
• 1964 The Cradle Will Rock as Moll

Film

• 1962 Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
• 1963 Summer Holiday
• 1968 For Love of Ivy

External links

• Lauri Peters at IMDb
• Lauri Peters at the Internet Broadway Database