Sutton Foster Movies and TV Shows: Full Credits List

Sutton Foster has spent decades proving that Broadway stars can own the small screen too — though she’s never tried to replace one career with another. Born March 18, 1975, this Kentucky native built her reputation as a two-time Tony Award winner before ever appearing as Liza Miller on the TV series Younger.

Younger Episodes: 84 ·
Bunheads Episodes: 18 ·
Notable Films: Gravy (2015) ·
Other Credits: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life ·
IMDb Rating Younger: 7.7

Seven verified data points trace the outline of a career built on stage first, with screen work arriving as a deliberate supplement rather than a pivot.

The pattern is unmistakable: Sutton Foster has built one of the most accomplished stage careers of her generation and a television career that, while shorter and less consistent, gave her the longest sustained screen role of her life in Younger.

What is Sutton Foster most famous for?

Sutton Foster has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical seven times, winning twice — first in 2002 for Thoroughly Modern Millie as Millie Dillmount, and again in 2011 for Anything Goes as Reno Sweeney (Wikipedia). Rotating between Grease, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, The Music Man, Sweeney Todd, and Once Upon a Mattress across the 2000s and early 2010s, she accumulated a body of stage work that put her in the top tier of contemporary Broadway performers (Wikipedia). Her Broadway role in Violet in 2014 earned her a Tony nomination, but that same year marked a turning point — Younger would begin filming the following year and pull her attention away from the stage for the foreseeable future (Playbill).

Broadway achievements

• First Tony Award: Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002)
• Second Tony Award: Anything Goes (2011)
• Laurence Olivier Award nomination: Anything Goes London revival (2021)
• Seven Tony nominations total

The implication: Foster’s stage credentials give her leverage that most television performers never accumulate, making her transition to screen work a calculated expansion rather than a desperate pivot.

Transition to TV

Television arrived later for Foster than it does for most actors who build careers on screen. Younger (2015–2021) gave her a starring role as Liza Miller — a 40-something divorced woman who pretends to be 26 to re-enter the publishing workforce — and the show ran for seven seasons across TV Land and Paramount (Rotten Tomatoes). She led Bunheads from 2012 to 2013 on ABC Family (later Freeform), playing Michelle Simms, a Vegas dancer who inherits a coastal California ballet studio, but that series ran for only 18 episodes before cancellation (Wikipedia). The contrast with her Broadway run is stark: years of consecutive leading roles on stage versus short-lived or guest-only television commitments.

What else has Sutton Foster been in?

Beyond Younger and Bunheads, Foster has racked up guest appearances across a wide range of shows. She guest-starred on The Good Wife (CBS, 2009–2016) and Royal Pains (USA, 2009–2016), appeared on Flight of the Conchords (HBO, 2007–2009), and had roles on Psych (USA, 2006–2014), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Elementary (CBS, 2012) (Apple TV). She also appeared in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, the 2016 Netflix revival of the beloved series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, who had previously cast her in Bunheads (Wikipedia). Her most recent television credit listed is a guest role on A Million Little Things.

TV series list

• Younger (2015–2021) — Liza Miller, lead role
• Bunheads (2012–2013) — Michelle Simms, lead role
• Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016) — guest appearance
• The Good Wife, Royal Pains, Flight of the Conchords, Psych, Law & Order: SVU, Elementary — guest roles
• A Million Little Things — most recent guest credit

What this means: Foster’s television presence, while scattered across guest spots and short runs, demonstrates consistent casting director confidence in her screen abilities.

Movies and guest roles

Foster’s filmography is notably thin. She appeared in Gravy (2015), a comedy-horror film that Rotten Tomatoes rated at just 30%, and The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014), which starred Robin Williams and received modest reviews (Rotten Tomatoes). Both roles were supporting parts rather than leads — a pattern that reflects her career philosophy of treating screen work as supplementary to her stage identity rather than a replacement for it. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn came out in 2014, placing her first two film credits in back-to-back years before her television schedule with Younger consumed her working hours.

Was Sutton Foster in The Greatest Showman?

No. Sutton Foster does not appear in The Greatest Showman (2017), the Hugh Jackman-led musical that became a global box-office hit. The confusion is understandable — Foster has appeared alongside Hugh Jackman in multiple Broadway productions, and the two have a well-documented professional friendship that tabloids have periodically misportrayed (Wikipedia). The film’s cast includes Zendaya, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, and Keala Settle, but not Foster.

Greatest Showman cast facts

The Greatest Showman grossed over $435 million worldwide and received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (“This Is Me”) (Rotten Tomatoes). It was a significant cultural moment for musical theater fans, which explains why questions about Foster’s involvement persist — she occupies a similar cultural space in audiences’ minds as the film’s stars.

Her actual film roles

Foster’s filmography contains exactly two titles: Gravy (2015) and The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014). Neither earned major awards attention or significant cultural traction compared to The Greatest Showman, but both demonstrate her willingness to take supporting roles in smaller projects rather than chase blockbuster cameos (Rotten Tomatoes). This restraint is characteristic of her broader career strategy: she has consistently chosen depth on stage over breadth on screen.

What movies and TV shows has Sutton Foster done with Hugh Jackman?

Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman have never shared a screen project together — not in film, not in television, not in any project that has been released publicly through 2024 (Wikipedia). Every assumption that they have worked together onscreen appears to stem from their extensive shared history on Broadway, where they have co-starred in The Music Man. That production, which ran in 2023 on Broadway, featured Jackman as Harold Hill and Foster as Marian Paroo, and it generated enormous media coverage — much of which focused on their offstage friendship rather than their stage chemistry (Wikipedia).

Stage collaborations

The Music Man (2023) is the most prominent recent collaboration between Foster and Jackman, but it is not their first. Both have built careers intersecting through the Broadway community, where Jackman’s profile as Wolverine in the X-Men films gave him a level of mainstream recognition that most Broadway performers never achieve. Foster’s collaboration on The Music Man placed her in the same production as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable stage converts — and that proximity appears to be the primary source of the onscreen collaboration myth (Wikipedia).

No shared screen projects

The absence of any shared film or television credit between Foster and Jackman is confirmed across multiple filmography databases including IMDb and Wikipedia (TV Guide). The Good Wife, Royal Pains, and Younger — all shows where Foster appeared — aired without any Jackman involvement. Younger, particularly, has no connection to Jackman despite the show’s own media coverage sometimes referencing theatrical star power. For viewers who discovered Foster through Younger or Bunheads and then explored her career, the Jackman connection is entirely stage-based. For those curious about the full extent of Foster’s on-screen work, a comprehensive list of her movies and TV shows is available, which includes Scent of a Woman cast.

How did Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster meet?

Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman met through the Broadway community, where both built their reputations over decades before ever appearing in the same production (Wikipedia). Jackman established himself as a stage star with The Boy from Oz (2003), winning a Tony Award and earning international recognition that made him a rare Broadway performer with crossover mainstream fame. Foster built her reputation through a series of original Broadway castings — Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, Shrek the Musical, Violet — accumulating the kind of stage credibility that the industry uses to measure performers against one another.

Professional background

Both Jackman and Foster belong to the small group of performers who can credibly claim equal mastery in acting, singing, and dancing — a designation the industry calls “triple threat,” and one that applies to Foster without qualification (Fandango). Their professional circles overlapped through the Broadway producers, directors, choreographers, and casting teams they encountered over the years. When Jackman’s career expanded into film with X-Men (2000), Foster’s remained firmly on stage through the 2000s and early 2010s. The two orbits of Broadway stardom eventually intersected when The Music Man was announced with both in the cast.

Friendship timeline

The most reliable public evidence of their friendship comes from the period surrounding and following The Music Man (2023), when they appeared together at press events, on talk shows, and in social media posts. Prior to 2023, there is no verified record of a personal friendship separate from their shared professional community. What has been reported in tabloids — speculation about romantic connections, references to Jackman’s then-wife Deborra-Lee Furness, and questions about personal relationships — does not correspond to any confirmed fact (Wikipedia). The friendship appears genuine; the romantic rumors do not.

“With an outsized talent, she fully embraced her ambitions, performing in national tours of shows, Off-Broadway productions, on television in Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Bunheads and the quirky romantic comedy Younger.”

— Rotten Tomatoes editorial summary

“One of the few real triple threats of her generation, Sutton Foster was admired by theatergoers and critics alike for her remarkable dancing, singing and acting skills.”

— Fandango filmography summary

Her filmography remains thin by choice, not by circumstance. For musical theater audiences, the question isn’t whether she can carry a stage — she has proven that seven times over — but whether she’ll choose to return to it now that Younger has closed and her next chapter remains unwritten. The answer will likely come when the next Broadway project worth her time surfaces.

Related reading: Cast of the Copenhagen Test – Full Cast and Character Guide

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