Background and career
Harvey Forbes Fierstein ( FIRE-steen; born June 6, 1952) is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter, known for his distinctive gravelly voice. He gained notice for his theater work in Torch Song Trilogy, winning both the Tony Award for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play. He went on to win the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for La Cage aux Folles, then Best Actor in a Musical for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a role he reprised for the Hairspray Live! television special. On film he reprised his role in the film version of Torch Song Trilogy (1988), appeared in Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, and as the voice of Yao in both Mulan and Mulan II. Fierstein also wrote the books for the Tony Award-winning musicals Kinky Boots, Newsies, and Tony Award-nominated, Drama League Award-winner A Catered Affair. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2025 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. As one of the first openly gay celebrities in the United States, Fierstein helped turn gay and lesbian life into a viable subject for contemporary drama "with no apologies and no climactic suicides". Fierstein's distinctive gravelly voice is a result of an overdeveloped vestibular fold in his vocal cords, essentially giving him a "double voice" when he speaks.
Harvey Forbes Fierstein was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City, on June 6, 1952, the son of Jacqueline Harriet Gilbert, a school librarian, and Irving Fierstein, a handkerchief manufacturer. Fierstein has a brother, Ronald Fierstein. The family belonged to a Conservative Jewish temple. Prior to puberty, Fierstein was a soprano in a professional boys' choir. Fierstein graduated from the High School of Art and Design and received a BFA from the Pratt Institute in 1973.
Fierstein has authored op-eds for The New York Times and the PBS series In the Life.
Fierstein began working in the theater as a founding member of the Gallery Players of Park Slope before being cast in Andy Warhol's only play, Pork. Fierstein's other early roles included "a transvestite in his own Flatbush Tosca...a 300-year-old woman, Lillian Russell, and 26 other parts in Ronald Tavel's My Fetus Lived on Amboy Street". Fierstein also performed his own drag routine in Greenwich Village, including an impersonation of Ethel Merman singing "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun".
Fierstein is known for the play and film Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and starred in both off-Broadway (with a young Matthew Broderick) and on Broadway (with Estelle Getty and Fisher Stevens). The 1982 Broadway production won him two Tony Awards, for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play; two Drama Desk Awards, for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Actor in a Play; and the Theatre World Award. Fierstein is the first openly gay actor to win a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. The film adaptation of Torch Song Trilogy earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Male Lead. Fierstein also wrote the book for La Cage aux Folles (1983), winning another Tony Award, this time for Best Book of a Musical, and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Book. During his Tony Award acceptance speech, Fierstein acknowledged his male lover; according to Entertainment Weekly, this was "not a first", but was "still startling to many viewers". Fierstein narrated the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), for which he won a News & Documentary Emmy Award. His playwriting credits include Spookhouse (1984), Safe Sex (1987), and Forget Him (1988). Legs Diamond, his 1988 collaboration with Peter Allen, was a critical and commercial failure, closing after 72 previews and 64 performances, but the songs live on in Peter Allen's biographical musical, The Boy from Oz.
Fierstein was praised for his 1990 role as the voice of Karl, Homer Simpson's assistant, in the "Simpson and Delilah" episode of The Simpsons. Fierstein portrayed Mark Newberger in Cheers, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1992. In 1993, Fierstein co-starred with Mara Wilson, Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire. In 1994, Fierstein became the first gay actor to play a principal gay character in a television series when he appeared as fashion designer Dennis Sinclair in the short-lived CBS series Daddy's Girls. Fierstein voiced the role of Yao in Disney's animated feature Mulan, a role he later reprised for the video game Kingdom Hearts II and the direct-to-DVD sequel Mulan II. Fierstein voiced the character of Elmer in the 1999 HBO special based on his children's book The Sissy Duckling, which won the Humanitas Prize for Children's Animation.
