Katie Holmes made her official debut on Broadway last night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in the Arthur Miller classic World War II drama “All My Sons,” joining an elite cast and braving the star-studded audience, the critics and the anti-Scientology protesters outside.

Stepping on that stage must be nerve-wracking even for veteran theater actors and the more so for a neophyte who is famous for having married Hollywood star Tom Cruise and whose life is picked apart in tabloids on a daily basis.

Seated in the audience for opening night were Isabella Rossellini, Patricia Clarkson, Blythe Danner, Barbara Walters, Dennis Farina, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Arthur Miller’s daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller.

Holmes’ husband, Tom Cruise, was also there, as he was last month for the first night of preview performances.

Katie Holmes joins an esteemed cast made up of multiple Emmy Award and Tony Award winner John Lithgow, two-time Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest and the younger Tony-, Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated Patrick Wilson.

Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City in January 1947, directed by Elia Kazan. It received the 1947 Tony Award for Best Play.

In the current stage production, directed by Simon McBurney, Holmes plays a supporting role as Ann, a young woman whose fiancé has died in the war and who visits his parents, portrayed by Wiest and Lithgow. Wilson plays the surviving son, an idealistic young man who has fallen in love with his late brother’s sweetheart.

The stage revival’s first full week of previews earned $684,002, becoming the highest-grossing play on Broadway.

There was another crowd around the theater, in mid-September when previews started as well as last night, who certainly did not pay for a ticket. Anti-Scientology group Anonymous was present in full force Thursday, yelling and chanting its favorite slogans of freeing Katie.

The protesters have explained that they do not wish to boycott the play or to damage Holmes’ part in it; they only want to educate the public with regards to Scientology.