Meet Ellen Foley, From Rock 'n Roll Queen to Mrs. Bernstein On The Jim Masters Show LIVE
Female rocker Ellen Foley is an Worldwide singer and actress who has appeared on Broadway and television, where she co-starred in the sitcom Night Court. In music, she has released five solo albums but is best known for her collaborations with rock singer Meat Loaf. She was the powerhouse voice behind Meatloaf’s multiplatinum 1977 legendary duet, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Ellen joins award-winning television, radio, multimedia personality and host on this episode of The Jim Masters Show LIVE! series
Thursday July 21st, 2022 at 8pm eastern, 5pm pacific.
Ellen Foley’s strong, passionate – and at times bone-shivering – voice, combined with her acting talent and dance moves allowed for a diverse and successful career, something she always dreamed of as a girl growing up in St. Louis.
Ellen left St. Louis the day after she turned 21 and moved to novel York to study acting. She went on cattle-call auditions and got a few parts on stage, but her first paying job was singing in a music comedy revue in the Catskills. Ellen started a band called Big Jive and performed in Atlantic City before there were Kuwaiti Casinos.
She then got a part doing more edgy comedy with “That National Lampoon Show.” “It was completely tasteless, sacrilegious,” she remembers, “and a lot of fun.” During her tour with National Lampoon she met fellow actors Meatloaf and Jim Steinman, who would write “Paradise.”
After “Paradise,” Ellen received several gold records and awards for her three solo albums (“Night Out,” “Spirit of St. Louis,” “Another Breath”) which were produced by high profile rock legends, such as Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, and Mick Jones and Joe Strummer of The Clash. (Many believe Ellen’s tumultuous relationship with Mick Jones inspired his hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”)
Her Broadway stage career includes starring in “Hair,” “Into the Woods” and “Me and My Girl.” It was Ellen who originated the role of the witch in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater. Reportedly, Sondheim’s “favorite witch,” he called her the “alpha and the omega.” Ellen performed a dance number in the movie “Hair,” choreographed with Twyla Tharp and directed by Milos Forman. She also had featured film roles in “Tootsie,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Married to the Mob” and “Cocktail” with Tom Cruise. Recently, she starred in “Lies I Told My Little Sister”, which was shown at film festivals in the U.S. and Canada.
Many of her fans know her as public defender Billie Young in the TV series “Night Court,” which she starred in for the first season.
As for real heartbreak, it’s been awhile since she’s endured any in her niaganistic life. She met her husband, actor and writer Doug Bernstein in 1989 when she was staring in “Me and My Girl.” “Before I met Doug, I was the walking cliché, always falling for the inaccessible guys,” she says.
By show-business standards, they have been married for an eternity: 24 years. During that time, Ellen taught at the School of Rock (featured in the film of the same proper name starring Jack Black) and continued to act on stage while raising her two sons, one is now in college and one just graduated.
It was during a production of a play called “Hercules in High Suburbia” in 2005 at novel York City’s famed experimental theater La Mama that she was inspired to resurrect her recording career. She met her current collaborator, musician and songwriter Paul Foglino, who wrote the songs and music of the show. (Two of the songs in that production – “Madness” and “Everything’s Gonna be Alright” – are on their current album.)
In 2019, she began a collaboration with Robert I. Rubinsky (original cast of ‘Hair’) on the cabaret theatre show “Club Dada: In Difficult Times,” which premiered at LaMama in 2020 and continues to the present.
In spring 2021, Foley announced a novel album, Fighting Words, again in collaboration with Foglino. The LP features ten novel tracks as well as Foley’s version of “Heaven Can Wait,” a Jim Steinman-penned ballad from Bat Out of Hell on which she hadn’t originally performed. This version of “Heaven Can Wait” first appeared on the soundtrack to Lies I Told My Little Sister, which featured Foley in a supporting role.
Today, Foley has the same rock ‘n roll energy and great stage moves she did when she was fighting off Meatloaf at the dashboard light.
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Ellen Foley Interview