Emmy Award winner Jennifer Bassey is best known to legions of soap opera fans as the alcoholic-nymphomaniac Marian Colby, the first cougar – before they called them that — on network television, in ABC’s “All My Children,” a role she played for thirty years. Born in Chicago, she was one of the first ever Playboy Bunnies, and she holds the record for the lowest entrance marks in the history of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she graduated with honors at the top of her class, alongside classmate Sir Anothony Hopkins. During her distinguished career she has starred on stage, films, and television, and now streaming!

Jennifer’s many honors include her Emmy Award for the series “Anacostia,” a 2024 Independent Series Award (ISA) for the Amazon series “Kombucha Cure,” and two Soap Opera Digest Awards, the first for Best Scene Stealer and, with David Canary, for Most Favorite Couple, for “All My Children,” and Cary Grant presented her with the Straw Hat Award for starring with Mickey Rooney in See How They Run.

Her Broadway appearances, under her birth name Joan Bassie, include Noel Coward’s Tonight at 8:30, Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid, and Eugene O’Neil’s A Touch of the Poet for The American National Theatre and Academy, the original Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, Joe Orton’s Loot, Not Now, Darling directed by the legendary George Abbott, The Jockey Club Stakes directed by Cyril Richard, In Praise of Love opposite Rex Harrison, and Neil Simon’s California Suite. Off-Broadway she starred as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew at the Roundabout Theater, Wendy Wasserstein’s Isn’t It Romantic?, Moliere’s Tartuffe, regionally as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at The Stratford Theatre, in Love Letters, with Ken Kercheval, and, with Fred Willard, Robert Klein, and David Steinberg, she was an original member of The Second City in Chicago.

Jennifer’s 22 films include her favorite, “Dunston Checks In”, in which she was massaged by an orangutan, “27 Dresses”, “The Bonfire at the Vanities”, and “Twogether”, costarring with and directed by Nick Cassavetes. She has 43 TV series to her credit, including “Falcon Crest”, “Murphy Brown”, “Matlock”, “L.A. Law”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, “30 Rock”, and “Law & Order”. Most recently she appeared with Mary Louise Parker in the film “Omni Loop” (2024), now streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu, and she is currently filming the new soap opera “Heart Notes”.

Miss Bassey first appeared on stage at 54 Below in February and November of 2024, in her critically acclaimed performance as the faded ballerina Grushinskaya in Grand Hotel: The 35th Anniversary Original Broadway Cast Reunion Concert (2025 MAC Award nominee for Best Special Event), a show that has a very special significance for her because the Tony Award nominated book was written by her late husband, Tony Award winning writer and producer Luther Davis (Kismet, Timbuktu; films “Lady In a Cage”, “The Hucksters”). Jennifer is thrilled to return to 54 Below in Jennifer Bassey: From Soaps Opera to Cabaret, and honored to be making her solo nightclub debut with arrangements and direction by the legendary Marilyn Maye.