Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Forbes Fierstein, born June 6, 1952, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter known at once for his theater work and for a gravelly voice that became one of his signatures. That voice comes from an overdeveloped vestibular fold in his vocal cords, giving him what has been described as a “double voice” when he speaks. He grew up the son of Jacqueline Harriet Gilbert, a school librarian, and Irving Fierstein, a handkerchief manufacturer, in a family that belonged to a Conservative Jewish temple.

Before puberty, Fierstein was a soprano in a professional boys’ choir. He graduated from the High School of Art and Design and earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1973. His early stage life was broad and experimental: he was a founding member of The Gallery Players of Park Slope, appeared in Andy Warhol’s only play, Pork, and took on roles ranging from a transvestite in his own Flatbush Tosca to a 300-year-old woman. He also performed a drag routine in Greenwich Village, including an impersonation of Ethel Merman singing “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun.”

Fierstein gained major notice with Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and starred in off-Broadway and on Broadway. The 1982 Broadway production won him Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, along with two Drama Desk Awards and the Theatre World Award. He became the first openly gay actor to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. In 1983, he wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles, winning the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. During that Tony acceptance speech, he acknowledged his male lover, a moment that Entertainment Weekly later described as still startling to many viewers.

His work moved easily between stage, film, and television. He reprised his role in the 1988 film version of Torch Song Trilogy, appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire and Independence Day, and voiced Yao in Mulan and Mulan II. He narrated The Times of Harvey Milk, winning a News & Documentary Emmy Award, and earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his role on Cheers. On Broadway, he won another Tony for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a role he later reprised for Hairspray Live!

Fierstein also wrote the books for major musicals including Newsies, Kinky Boots, and A Catered Affair. Kinky Boots won the Tony Award for Best Musical, while A Catered Affair won the Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Musical. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007 and received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2025. As one of the first openly gay celebrities in the United States, he helped make gay and lesbian life a viable subject for contemporary drama “with no apologies and no climactic suicides.” That clarity, warmth, and refusal to soften the truth are why his words still carry weight.