Christine Ebersole’s journey from an impeccably renovated midcentury house in the San Fernando Valley to a tatterdemalion side-hall colonial in Maplewood, N.J., involved one husband, three children and seven pets. But it began with an agent who suddenly stopped dialing for dollars on his client’s behalf in the late 1990s.

“I was in my mid-40s, and was basically told that it was over for me,” said Ms. Ebersole, 68, a two-time Tony Award winner (for the musicals “42nd Street” and “Grey Gardens”) and a star of the CBS comedy “Bob Hearts Abishola,” now in its third season. “I didn’t believe it, thankfully. I have this God-given talent, and I’ve been a good steward of it. The things I couldn’t control were my body and my face, and gravity taking hold — that kind of thing — but my talent hadn’t changed.”

“They say the older actors get, the farther east they move, so I figured the East Coast was where I needed to go,” continued Ms. Ebersole, who has a small but eye-catching role in the recently released movie “Licorice Pizza,” and whose new collection of standards, “After the Ball,” is due out in February. “We’ll all end up in China.”