Harvey Fierstein Harvey Fierstein refers to himself as the first "real live, out-of-the-closet queer on Broadway," yet a producer of his Torch Song Trilogy once said that he proved “that you could use a gay context and a gay experience and speak in universal truths." Aside from all of that, Fierstein is also one of only two people to win a Tony award in four separate categories. Fierstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 6, 1954, to parents who worked as a handkerchief manufacturer and a school librarian. He began acting at the age of eleven, as a founding member of the Gallery Players Community Theatre. At fifteen, he was performing as a drag queen in Manhattan clubs, and later earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute. Putting all his training to good use, Fierstein wrote three autobiographical one-act plays that were being produced separately in small theaters, with Matthew Broderick playing the role of the adopted son, David. Fusing the three plays together into one four-hour long production, it became the Torch Song Trilogy and landed on Broadway in 1982, with Fierstein still starring, although Broderick had moved on to starring in Brighton Beach Memoirs. At the Tony Awards the following year Fierstein won awards for Best Play and Leading Actor in a Play, and Broderick won an award for Brighton Beach Memoirs. Torch Song Trilogy was turned into a movie in 1988, still starring Fierstein, with Broderick returning to play the role of Fierstein's lover.
In 1984, Fierstein wrote the book for the musical La Cage aux Folles, and won a Tony for Best Book. In 2003, after appearing in the Broadway musical based on Jon Waters' movie Hairspray, he won a Tony for Leading Actor in a Musical. These four Tony awards, all in separate categories, placed him in a tie with Tommy Tune as the only person to have won for Tony awards. In 2005, Fierstein took on the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. Fierstein has had his share of roles in movies as well, with his first hit after Torch Song Trilogy being Mrs. Doubtfire, starring as Robin Williams' brother. He then appeared in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway with John Cusack and Dianne Wiest, and in 1996, he had a small role in Independence Day, starring Will Smith, Bill Pullman, and Jeff Goldblum. Fierstein's voice is always immediately recognizable, and in 1998 he lent his voice to the character of Yao in Disney's Mulan. Working with Williams once again, as well as Danny DeVito, Fierstein appeared in Death to Smoochy, and shortly after, he worked with DeVito again in the DeVito-directed Duplex, starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore.
No stranger to television either, Fierstein has guest-starred on countless shows, from animated, to sitcoms, to dramas. He has appeared on Miami Vice, The Simpsons, Cheers, Murder She Wrote, and also played the Heat Miser on a live action version of The Year Without a Santa Claus, which also starred Michael McKean, Carol Kane, and John Goodman. After writing the story The Sissy Duckling, Fierstein provided the voice of the title character in a TV adaptation. Ed Asner and Melissa Etheridge voiced the duckling's parents. In 2006, when Katie Couric was leaving The Today Show, Fierstein made an appearance on the show singing a lullaby tribute to her, along with Broadway's The Jersey Boys. Along with his four Tony awards, in 1994 Fierstein won a GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Visibility Award, and in 2000 he won the Humanitas Prize for The Sissy Duckling. YUDDY |
