Who is Lorna Luft? All about Judy Garland’s daughter as she weighs in on 'Wicked' success 

Lorna Luft is an actress and singer.

As the daughter of Judy Garland and film producer Sid Luft, the entertainment world shaped her life from the very beginning. Lorna Luft stepped into show business early.

She first appeared on television at 11, singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town on the 1963 Christmas episode of her mother’s variety show. The holiday special included her siblings, Liza Minnelli and Joey Luft, and by the next year, she had joined the family’s concert tour. That run ended with a month-long engagement at New York’s Palace Theatre, marking the final time a teenage Lorna performed onstage with her mother.

Her career also expanded into writing. In 1998, she published Me and My Shadows, a family memoir that was later adapted into an Emmy-winning miniseries. Away from the spotlight, Luft put her energy into advocacy, a commitment that grew stronger after her 2012 breast cancer diagnosis.

She pledged to fight the illness and became an active supporter of related causes. Lorna Luft returned to the news recently as renewed excitement around Wicked placed fresh attention on the extended world of Oz and the people closest to its legacy.

---

Lorna Luft reflects on Wicked’s success and the enduring magic of Oz

The world of Oz had always cast a long shadow over Judy Garland’s family, but recently that glow brightened again. With Wicked drawing in a new wave of viewers, Garland’s daughter, Lorna Luft, said she felt nothing but pride watching the story evolve for another generation.

“I am so pleased for everyone on Wicked,” Luft told E! News at The Pierre Hotel on Nov. 20 during the Red Diamond 95th Anniversary Gala.

“Jon Chu is amazing. Cynthia [Erivo] and Ariana [Grande] and everybody in that film, they're a separate entity, OK? And they have their own story and their own visit with Oz.”

She went on to praise the larger ensemble.

“But I think they will agree with me, Jeff [Goldblum] and Michelle [Yeoh] and everyone affected by going to Oz and joining the Oz family is quite remarkable,” Luft shared.

Still, she made sure to credit the originator behind both The Wizard of Oz and Wicked.

“I think that we all have one person to thank, and that's L. Frank Baum for writing the books,” she shared.

---

Lorna Luft looks back on childhood memories as she reflects on Wicked’s triumph

In her conversation with E! News, Lorna Luft slipped into a childhood memory, one of the first times she watched her mother play Dorothy in the 1939 classic that famously shifts from black-and-white to Technicolor. She had been very young at the time, and the moment left a mark.

"I remember that when I first saw it I was quite small, I didn't see it on a color TV, so I didn't quite [understand], but I understood those monkeys, and I got hysterical," she shared.

Her mother happened to be away when it aired.

“My mom was in New York, and she called and she got a hysterical child on the phone saying, 'The monkeys took you to New York?!'” Luft recalled

“And she said, 'I'm never letting the children see that movie without me ever again,'" she added.

Garland, who died in 1969 at the age of 47, had become inseparable from the role of Dorothy Gale in the 1939 adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Years later, Lorna Luft showed the same affection for Wicked, which carried Oz’s legacy forward. According to People Magazine, when the first installment of the two-part adaptation premiered in November 2024, she shared her reaction on Instagram, calling the film “breathtaking to look at” and “everything I wanted it to be.”

“I told the genius Director Jon Chu that he had picked up the torch, the broom, and the wand, and carried it forward; and thanked him, for adding to the family,” she wrote.

In an interview with People Magazine this past April, Luft added that she believed her mother “would’ve loved” Wicked. Asked which songs Garland might have gravitated toward, she admitted she couldn’t name one.

“I have no idea. But she would've loved it.”