Edward Hibbert

Edward Hibbert is a British-American actor and voice performer best known for playing the fussy, acid-tongued food critic Gil Chesterton on Frasier (1993), a character long understood as queer-coded, with the show gesturing toward his sexuality — including a running gag of him slipping into a gay bar — without ever fully confirming it on screen. Hibbert has been openly gay throughout his public career, and in 1993 he won an Obie Award for originating the role of Sterling, a flamboyant interior decorator caring for a partner dying of AIDS, in Paul Rudnick's play Jeffrey. Trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he built an extensive stage career on both sides of the Atlantic, including Broadway runs in Me and My Girl, Noises Off, Curtains, and The Drowsy Chaperone, alongside recurring engagements devoted to the plays and music of Noël Coward. He is also known to younger audiences as the voice of Zazu in later installments of Disney's The Lion King franchise. Hibbert has remained a familiar presence at LGBTQ+ theatrical events and has spoken about the relative ease of being an openly gay actor in Hollywood and New York theater compared to earlier generations of performers.