Menzel was born in Queens, New York.[1][2] Her mother, Helene, is a therapist, and her father, Stuart Mentzel, worked as a pajama salesman.[3] She has a younger sister, Cara. Her family is Jewish;[4][5] her grandparents emigrated from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. [6] Her family lived in Syosset, New York and New Jersey (East Brunswick, Somerset and Marlboro). When Menzel was 15 years old, her parents divorced and she began working as a wedding and bar mitzvah singer, a job which she continued throughout her time at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[7] Menzel herself, however didn't have a Bat Mitzvah after she quit Hebrew school as a girl.[8] She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama at New York University prior to being cast in Jonathan Larson's rock musical Rent. She changed the spelling of her surname to Menzel to better reflect the pronunciation the Mentzel family had adopted in America.[9] She was friends with actor Adam Pascal before they worked together in Rent.[3] Theatre career
