Christine Ebersole didn’t blink before the shimmering Tony Award crowd as she accepted the 2007 Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role in Grey Gardens. She didn’t pull any punches either.

“I left Hollywood when they told me I was over the hill,” she said, “and now I’m standing here with the most distinguished award for what I consider to be the role of a lifetime.”

It was a long journey to that “role of a lifetime.” After several years acting in films like Amadeus and Dead Again, the 56-year-old actress – appearing in her own cabaret show on Sunday at Sunset Center – found her true calling: Broadway. Though the eight shows per week can be grueling, Ebersole finds live theater much more satisfying.

“Leaving Los Angeles was an act of self-empowerment,” Ebersole says before a show at Café Carlyle in New York City. “Hollywood creates this illusion which I think is very pervasive in the culture. Nothing is in your control – it’s this random thing that’s just kind of outside of yourself. And only if you hit the numbers do you get lucky and land a job.”

Ebersole actually began her career in theater, performing in shows like Oklahoma and Camelot in the mid ’70s. But she really began dominating as a stage actress on Broadway in her late 40s: In 2001, she snagged her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as Dorothy in Harry Warren’s 42nd Street.

“You’re just kind of in shock a little bit,” Ebersole says of winning the award. “It’s a little bit surreal and doesn’t really dawn on you until later. Nobody gets in this for awards. It’s the icing on the cake.”

The year 2006 was a special one for Ebersole; she was given the role which would eventually lead to her second Tony Award.

She says that even before she was offered the dual roles of Big Edie and Little Edie in Grey Gardens she had been obsessed with the Albert and David Maysles 1975 documentary that inspired the musical.

In the song “Around the World,” from the Grey Gardens musical, Ebersole keeps Edie’s indefinable New England accent: “It’s my mother’s house in my mother’s name and you can’t beat mother at mother’s game.”

Ebersole embraces the roles of Long Island’s manic monarchs with a precision and rawness that generates goose bumps.

“There’s no way to describe [Grey Gardens] except as the role of a lifetime, playing the two parts of the mother and daughter and the vocal and emotional demands of it,” Ebersole says. “Never before had there been anything like it in my life.”

In between the Broadway shows, she continues to make television appearances. She recently appeared on Ugly Betty and Royal Pains and sang a tribute to Bush supporters on The Colbert Report.

After Grey Gardens, Ebersole played Elvira, opposite Angela Lansbury in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. But these days, the main focus is her cabaret show.

In her show (accompanied by John Oddo), now in its third week, Ebersole intertwines classic ballads like “Stormy Weather” with personal stories about her life in Hollywood and now in the Jersey suburbs, where she says she enjoys vacuuming and doing laundry.

After more than 30 years in film, television and live theater, the vivacious actress has no intention of slowing down.

“I’m going to continue doing what I love to do,” Ebersole says.

• • •

The already sold-out Tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber on Saturday night keeps the Broadway theme humming all weekend in Carmel.

An eight-piece orchestra will back five Broadway stars – including Valerie Perri, who played the lead role in Evita on Broadway – as they sing selections from more than 10 Webber musicals.

The program will also feature Webber pieces that weren’t written for musicals. Norman Large and Dale Kristen will perform “Amigos Para Siempre,” which was composed for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. And Dale Kristen will sing “Pie Jesu” from Requiem, a classical choral piece that Webber composed in honor of his late father.

TRIBUTE TO ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER is 8pm Saturday, Feb. 27, at Sunset Center, San Carlos at Ninth, Carmel. Sold out.

CHRISTINE EBERSOLE performs 7pm Sunday, Feb. 28. $37-$51. 620-2048.