For the first time in her career, Idina\u00a0Menzel has a clear path of projects laid out ahead, starting with ‘Frozen\u00a02’ — and she plans to keep it that way.<\/p>\n
In October, Idina Menzel released her latest holiday album, featuring a duet with one of pop\u2019s biggest stars; in November, she\u2019ll reprise her role in one of the most successful Disney franchises ever; and in December, she\u2019ll co-star in a gritty drama in which her character discovers Adam Sandler trapped naked in a trunk after a deal gone wrong. The 48-year-old is refusing to stay in one lane, and it\u2019s by design. \u201cI want to challenge myself,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The actress-singer has long sought to diversify her projects after first breaking through on the theater stage. When Menzel was in her early 20s, she landed a breakout role as Maureen Johnson in the 1996 musical Rent<\/em>. She gave her final performance a year later and hoped to translate her Broadway success into mainstream music stardom with a 1998 debut album on Hollywood Records. The LP flopped, and after the label dropped her, \u201cI couldn\u2019t get a job for years,\u201d she says today. \u201cAnd then, I finally got Wicked<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long after her run as Elphaba in the 2003 Broadway retelling of The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, however, that the same self-doubt she felt post-Rent<\/em> returned. Menzel later scored gigs in the 2007 Disney film Enchanted<\/em> and on TV\u2019s Glee<\/em>\u00a0—\u00a0she acted and sang in both —\u00a0but nothing stuck. \u201cI know how it feels to be in something really successful and then for it to go away —\u00a0to have to work yourself back up into the picture again,\u201d says Menzel. \u201cI\u2019m always wrestling with the fact that I\u2019m more comfortable in myself as a singer; as a regular human being, I tend to go inside and self-deprecate. But when I step into myself as an entertainer and a vocalist, I\u2019ve always been larger than life.\u201d Which is how Menzel landed her biggest role to date.<\/p>\n In 2013, Disney announced Menzel would be the voice star of a new queen, Elsa, in its animated film Frozen<\/em>. The franchise immediately exploded:\u00a0Frozen<\/em>\u00a0—\u00a0in which princess Anna journeys into the mountains to find sister Elsa, whose icy powers unleashed a magical, though threatening, winter on their kingdom —\u00a0became the top-grossing film of 2013, surpassing $1.3\u00a0billion in worldwide revenue, and, at the time, the top-grossing animated movie in box-office history. \u201cI had no idea that it would become what it has become,\u201d says Menzel, who is now excited to grow with a role instead of out of one. \u201cThis idea of harnessing your own power and not apologizing for what makes you really special as a woman in this world, that holds true no matter how old you are.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the soundtrack —\u00a0its 10 original songs were written and composed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez —\u00a0was the second-best-selling album of 2014 in the United States (second only to Taylor Swift\u2019s 1989<\/em>) based on sales alone, according to Nielsen Music, and spent 13 weeks atop the Billboard\u00a0200. Breakout track \u201cLet It Go\u201d peaked at No.\u00a05 on the Billboard Hot\u00a0100; it earned the Lopezes a Grammy Award for best song written for visual media and became Menzel\u2019s highest-charting hit. \u201cIt\u2019s a conduit for people to come up to me and share what the song means and what time in their life it helped them through,\u201d she says. \u201cIt keeps everything real.\u201d Now, Frozen<\/em> even has its own Broadway adaptation.<\/p>\n The unprecedented success of Frozen<\/em> led Walt Disney Animation Studios to make an equally unprecedented move: In March 2015, it announced Frozen\u00a02<\/em>, Disney\u2019s first-ever animated musical sequel. \u201cIt\u2019s rare,\u201d says Menzel, who cites The Lion King <\/em>and The Little Mermaid<\/em> specifically as massive franchises that in the past year have been remade but never given a sequel. \u201cIt was very, very important to [the creators] to have a real reason, a real story to tell,\u201d says Menzel, \u201cand to not just do it because they were trying to make money.\u201d Just as Frozen\u00a02<\/em> hits theaters Nov.\u00a022, five years after it was first announced, the original will become available on the newly launched Disney+ streaming service.<\/p>\n Frozen\u00a02<\/em> centers on the origins of Elsa\u2019s powers, making Menzel\u2019s role a much larger focus compared with the first film. Still, the theme is consistent: \u201cI love that it maintains the story between these two really incredible, powerful sisters —\u00a0and this idea of unconditional love between family, not romantic love.\u201d The film\u2019s plot aligns with Menzel\u2019s life outside of Frozen<\/em>, too. The Long Island native born Idina Kim Mentzel (she later changed the spelling of her last name) is close with her younger sister, Cara. In 2017, Idina wrote the foreword to Cara\u2019s memoir, Voice Lessons: A Sisters Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n Menzel, 48, says she has always supported girl power, as further evidenced on her latest holiday album, Christmas: A Season of Love<\/em>, on which she duets with Ariana Grande on a track rallying praise for Mrs. Claus. And in the coming years, Menzel will star in Sony\u2019s Cinderella<\/em> movie musical alongside Camila Cabello.<\/p>\n Until then, Menzel says she\u2019s busier than ever. Come Dec.\u00a013, she\u2019ll reveal a \u201ccompletely different\u201d side of herself in Uncut Gems<\/em>, a film about a celebrity jewelry dealer. Menzel calls it her first \u201cartsy-cool film\u201d and says that \u201cit\u2019s a nice juxtaposition to the Disney movie —\u00a0dark and raw.\u201d (And no singing.)<\/p>\n