Age: 56
male
William Ellis Porter II (born September 21, 1969) is an American actor and singer. Porter gained notice performing on Broadway before starting a solo career as a singer and actor. For his role as Lola in Kinky Boots, Porter won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. He credits the part for "cracking open" his feminine side to confront toxic masculinity. Porter also won the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the musical's accompanying album. Porter starred in all three seasons of the television series Pose, for which he was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards and won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first gay black man to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys. In 2020, he was included on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2022, he won another Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop. He made his directorial debut in 2022 with the romantic comedy film Anything's Possible. Porter received the Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 77th Tony Awards for his humanitarian work with the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and Entertainment Community Fund. Description above from the Wikipedia article Billy Porter, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Billy Porter
Angel Dumott-Schunard
for Angel Dumott-Schunard in RENT
Suggested by user_3073
Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson,[1] loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in Lower Manhattan's East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. The musical was first seen in a workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1993. This same Off-Broadway theatre was also the musical's initial home following its official 1996 opening. The show's creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly of an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, the night before the Off-Broadway premiere. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996.[2] On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won several awards including the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008, after 12 years, making it one of the longest-running shows on Broadway.[3] The production grossed over $280 million.[4] The success of the show led to several national tours and numerous foreign productions. In 2005, it was adapted into a motion picture featuring most of the original cast members.
