John Cameron Mitchell

John Cameron Mitchell is an openly gay American actor, writer, and director who created Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- first as an off-Broadway musical (1998) and then as a film (2001) which he also directed and starred in, playing the gender-ambiguous rock musician Hedwig. The film became a landmark of queer cinema, prized for its refusal to resolve Hedwig's gender identity into a tidy category. He also wrote and directed Shortbus (2006), an explicitly sexual film exploring gay male desire alongside a broader range of sexual identities in post-9/11 New York, and has appeared in numerous television and film roles. His work as a creator has been consistently focused on queer identity, desire, and the politics of gender.