She's Got Chutzpah

Tonya Pinkins: A Broadway actress with a "no guts, no glory" attitude.

"I do something gutsy every day," says Tonya Pinkins, the actress who plays the title role in Tony Kushner's new Broadway musical, "Caroline, or Change." If you think she's exaggerating, go see her daring portrayal of Caroline, a long-suffering maid living down South in the 1960s. Pinkins, who won a Tony in 1992 for her turn in "Jelly's Last Jam," does the unthinkable, at least in the world of musical theater: She doesn't try to be liked. "This character could not be sweet or likable or funny," she says. "She's raw."

As nervy as her performance is, it doesn't compare to Pinkins's boldness outside the theater. A mother of four, she returned to school at 34 and received her degree from Columbia College Chicago in two semesters. She also represented herself in a custody battle with her first husband and fought—successfully—to have the judge removed because of his bias against women. Pinkins could teach a class on gutsiness, and in fact, she does. For the past year, she has run a workshop called the Actorpreneur Attitude Transformational that helps performers learn what she calls, "the psychology of success and how to let go of insecurity." She says the biggest problem actors have is that they don't know how to receive. "But if you can't take a compliment," she asks, "how are you going to [accept] an Oscar®?"