Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein is a Tony Award-winning playwright and actor who has been openly gay since the beginning of his career — never closeted and never apologetic. He wrote and starred in Torch Song Trilogy (1982), a deeply personal, autobiographical Broadway play about a gay drag performer seeking love and family, winning the 1983 Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play — making him the first openly gay actor to win a competitive acting Tony. The following year he won a second Tony, for writing the book of La Cage aux Folles (1983), one of the first Broadway musicals to center on a gay couple. As an actor he is also known for Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Independence Day (1996), and Hairspray (2007), in which he originated the role of Edna Turnblad on Broadway. Fierstein's decades of visible, unapologetic queer presence in mainstream entertainment make him one of the most important LGBTQ+ figures in American theater history.