"Sunday Morning" anchor Jane Pauley asked him, "Do you know you've achieved legend status?"
"No, I have a lot to be told," replied Minnelli. "Like, I keep saying to Michael, 'Is that okay?' I had great people around me. The biggest thing I got was recognizing someone else's talent."
No one knows Liza like her best friend and confidante Feinstein. She said, "I mean, we met each other and we were connected at the hip."
Feinstein said of Minnelli, "You understand human nature better than almost anyone I know... I think that's one of the extraordinary things about him. I think that's why." that he is a great artist, because he is able to incorporate into it a fundamental understanding of the human condition. His art."
Being a star requires talent, tenacity and originality. But great people have one undefined thing which is permanent. And Minnelli had it from the beginning.
Liza Minnelli performing "Mein Her" in the 1972 film "Cabaret":
She won her first Tony in her teens for "Flora, the Red Men" ... and both an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year! The Grammy "Legend Award" made it the EGOT Grand Slam.
Fame was practically his birthright. She was just a child when she appeared in the film musical "In the Good Old Summertime" with her mother, Judy Garland.
"I thought my mother was perfect, perfect. Everything she did was every little thing," Minnelli said. "But my father - there was no one in the world like my father, and I am very much like him."
Film director Vincent Minnelli was a Hollywood legend in his time. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Kay Thompson were literally household names. "I grew up around all these wonderful people," Minnelli said, "and yet, my parents always told me, 'No, you're yours. There's no one like you.'"
At the age of 17, she started seeing it herself.
"I remember my first gig was in a show called 'Best Foot Forward,' Off-Broadway, and I mean Off-Broadway, right? I don't know, I knew that from the minute I walked on stage , I was 'me. I was the person I knew a lot about, because I thought a lot about his habits, about his thoughts."
And then in November 1964, at London's famous Palladium, Judy Garland filled the house, but her teenage daughter was a revelation ... and not just to the audience.
"My mom was my mom. You know, other people think of her as Judy Garland. She's mom. If I was scared, I'd look at her, and she'd know somehow, and that would calm me down." Just watch it through."
Judy Garland died five years later, in 1969, four months before the premiere of "The Sterile Cuckoo," Minnelli's Oscar-nominated performance at age 23. He performed this scene in one go:
"I knew that character very well and I really tried to get into that part, and thank God I did," Minnelli said.
In 1972, she transferred to a higher class, and credits a Frenchman. "Charles Aznavour changed my life. He changed my whole life."
Aznavour, who some call the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, taught him how to sing a song.
"Because I wasn't a good singer. I wasn't," Minnelli said. "And I knew, because my mom was the best in the world. But I went to see Charles Aznavour, and he sang a song, but it wasn't his voice that got me. What I got was that he did it." Why was singing in. I just thought, 'That's what I want to do!' He told that story through songs."
Aizenvoor also helped shape the Oscar-winning performance in the film version of Bob Fosse's film "Cabaret."
Paulie said, "I love the work you [done with your hands]."
"I did it, I learned it from Aznavour," said Minnelli.
Fosse saw it too. He recalled: "And I did that, and he went, [slapped knee]. I thought, 'Oh, that's cool! Maybe I can add something to it that he'll love even more.' And that's where he came from."
Fosse also directed TV's "Liza with a Z". Halston, and wearing that iconic pixie cut, she brought the house down.
Pauley asked, "At the end of it, the show is over, and now there's a shot offstage, and the look on your face, it's uncertain, it's not happy, it's not joyful... I don't know what it is." What? "
"It's usually — and I say it to Michael — we leave, and we're just in the mood, and everything, and we'll stop and I'll say, 'Was I okay?' It's that simple: was I okay?"
If she was born in the limelight, she also had a dark side, leading her mother down a path of drug addiction. There have also been failed marriages and abortions, all caught by the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
Minnelli is currently working with Feinstein as executive producer on an upcoming album titled "Gershwin Country" and is producing his new tour celebrating Judy Garland's 100th birthday this year.
WEB EXTRA: Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein perform "I Love a Violin":
"When I'm singing to an audience, I'm not singing to an audience, I'm singing to you," she said. "What I wanna say to the audience is, 'Have you ever felt like this? 'Cause it's what I'm going through now.' I just want people to know I've been through what they've been through."