Mark Ravenhill

Mark Ravenhill born 7 June 1966

Mark Ravenhill is one of England's leading contemporary playwrights.
His most famous plays include Shopping and Fucking (first performed in 1996), Some Explicit Polaroids (1999) and Mother Clap's Molly House (2001). He made his acting debut in his monologue Product, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005. He often writes for the The Guardian arts section.

Mark Ravenhill grew up in West Sussex, England and cultivated an interest in theatre early in life, putting on plays with his brother when they were children. He studied English and Drama at Bristol University from 1984-1987, and held down jobs as a freelance director, workshop leader and drama teacher.

In 1997, Ravenhill became the literary director of a new writing company, Paines Plough. In 2003, when Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director of the National Theatre, Ravenhill was brought in as part of his advisory team. In the mid-nineties, Ravenhill was diagnosed as HIV+, his partner of the early 1990s having died with AIDS.

Although he was at the heart of new British playwriting in the 1990s and 2000s, Ravenhill is very respectful of historical theatre and has claimed that he would like to see directors focus more on the classics and stop producing new plays that don’t have as much substance or meaning. In the same article, Ravenhill posits that directors have forced themselves into the 'eternal present', rather than expanding their reach to the many different cultures and genres of the past that they have to choose from. Further evidence of his interest in traditional theatre forms lies in Ravenhill's love of pantomime; he presented a Radio 4 documentary about the form and wrote Dick Whittington for the Barbican Theatre in 2006.

Ravenhill's work has transformed and developed in the 2000s. While his work in the 1990s - Shopping and Fucking, Handbag, and Some Explicit Polaroids for example - may be characterised by directly attempting to represent contemporary British society, his work has become more formally experimental and abstract.

His one-man show, Product, which toured internationally after its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005, is both a satire on our post-9/11 attitudes to terrorism, and also a minutely observed reflection on the limits of language and form to capture contemporary reality. His play, The Cut, opened in 2006 at the Donmar Warehouse starring Sir Ian McKellen and divided critics with its portrait of a world dominated by the administering of a surgical procedure: the country, the year and the procedure are all unspecified. A similarly ambiguous and politically indirect style characterises the seventeen short plays that make up Ravenhill for Breakfast.

Ravenhill's former style continues to get an airing in the short plays he has written for young people, Totally Over You and Citizenship, both written for the National Theatre's National Theatre Connections Programme.

In November 2007, he announced in the Guardian that for the moment, he would concentrate on writing about heterosexual characters.


In 2008 the Royal Court, The Gate Theatre, the National Theatre, Out of Joint, and Paines Plough collectively presented the seventeen short plays Ravenhill wrote for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007 under the title Ravenhill for Breakfast retitled as Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat.

Ravenhill was appointed Associate Director of London's Little Opera House at The King's Head Theatre in September 2010. He played an active role in the venue's relaunch as London's third Opera House along with patron Sir Jonathan Miller, Robin Norton-Hale and Artistic Director Adam Spreadbury-Maher[

Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein born 6 June 1952

Harvey Fierstein is a Tony Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated American actor, playwright, and screenwriter.

Born Harvey Forbes Fierstein in Brooklyn, New York, the gravelly-voiced actor perhaps is known best for the play and film Torch Song Trilogy, which he wrote and in which he starred. 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, and the film 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. Legs Diamond, his 1988 collaboration with Peter Allen, was a critical and commercial failure, closing after 72 previews and 64 performances. His other playwriting credits include Safe Sex, Spookhouse, and Forget Him.

Fierstein made his acting debut in Andy Warhol's only play, Pork's. In addition to Torch Song Trilogy, Fierstein's Broadway acting credits include Edna Turnblad in Hairspray (2003) [left], for which he won another Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (joining Tommy Tune as the only people to win the award in four different categories), and Tevye in the 2005 revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

Fierstein's film roles include Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, Robin Williams' maskmaker brother in Mrs Doubtfire, a Parade of Hope spokesman in Death to Smoochy, Garbo Talks, Duplex, and the blockbuster hit Independence Day. He also narrated the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk and voiced the role of Yao in Walt Disney's Mulan (1998), a role he later reprised for the video game Kingdom Hearts II.

On television, Fierstein was featured as the voice of Karl, Homer's assistant, in the Simpson and Delilah episode of The Simpsons, and the voice 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.

Additional credits include Miami Vice, Murder, She Wrote, the Showtime TV movie Common Ground (which he also wrote), and Cheers, which earned him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Fierstein is an occasional columnist writing about gay issues. His careers as a stand-up comic and female impersonator are mostly behind him.

Sam Harris

Sam Harris born 4 June 1961

Sam Harris is an Oklahoma-born singer, actor, songwriter and theatre director. 'Discovered' in the first season of US TV talent show Star Search at the age of 22, he has gone on to forge a successful career touring, on record and especially as a Broadway musical performer.

Harris is a Tony nominated actor in musical theatre, starring in Broadway productions of Grease, The Life, Cabaret, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Jazz Singer, among others. He has also appeared in films and TV shows.

Although encouraged several years ago to lend his talent to AIDS benefits, Sam Harris began to speak about his sexuality in the late 1990s and the recent ultra-conservative trend in America has inspired him towards greater openness and activism.

Harris and Danny Jacobsen, who is a director and presentation coach for numerous Blue Chip companies and also film producer, have been together since 1994. They adopted a son, Cooper Atticus Harris-Jacobsen, in April 2008 and the couple married on November 1, 2008.

When Sam sings, I'm perfectly all right, except for the fact that I can't breathe! I find myself crying and laughing and applauding and knowing why I went into this business. [Liza Minnelli]

Maurice Evans

Maurice Evans born 3 June 1901 (d. 1989)

Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor who became a US citizen in 1941.

Maurice Evans was born in Dorchester, Dorset. He first appeared on the stage in 1926 and joined the Old Vic Company in 1934, playing Hamlet, Richard II and Iago. His first appearance on Broadway was in Romeo and Juliet opposite Katharine Cornell in 1936, but he made his biggest impact in Shakespeare's Richard II, a production whose unexpected success was the surprise of the 1937 theatre season and allowed Evans to play Hamlet (1938) (the first time that the play was performed uncut on the New York stage), Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I (1939), Macbeth (1941), and Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1942) opposite the Viola of Helen Hayes, all under the direction of Margaret Webster.

When World War 2 arrived, he was in charge of an Army Entertainment Section in the Central Pacific and played his famous 'G.I. version' of Hamlet that cut the text of the play to make Prince Hamlet more decisive and appealing to the troops, an interpretation so popular that he took it to Broadway in 1945. He then shifted his attention to the works of Shaw, notably as John Tanner in Man and Superman and as King Magnus in The Apple Cart. He was also a successful Broadway producer of productions in which he did not appear, notably Teahouse of the August Moon.

American television audiences of the 1960s will remember Evans as Samantha's father, Maurice (the character was originally named Victor when he was introduced), on the sitcom Bewitched. He also played "The Puzzler" on Batman. Many viewers were unaware of Evans' extraordinary Shakespearean pedigree. His real-life insistence that his first name was pronounced the same as the name 'Morris' was ironically at odds with his Bewitched character's contrasting stance that it be pronounced 'Maw-REESE'.

As of 2006, Evans had appeared in more American television productions of Shakespeare than any other actor. In bringing Shakespeare to television, he was a true pioneer. Evans also brought his Shakespeare productions to Broadway many times, playing Hamlet in 4 separate productions for a grand total of 283 performances, a Broadway record that is not likely to be broken.

Evans had great impact onscreen as well, memorably in two 1968 films: as the evolved orang-utan, Dr Zaius in Planet of the Apes and as Rosemary's friend Hutch in the thriller Rosemary's Baby.

In his later years, Evans returned to the English country of his birth and died of cancer in East Sussex, England, aged 87.

Patrick Cargill

Patrick Cargill born 3 June 1918 (d. 1996)

Patrick Cargill was a British actor.

Patrick Cargill was one of the West End's most distinguished actors and a brilliant farceur. His sense of timing was excellent, an essential part of comedy acting. Although it was television that brought him fame.

He made his first West End appearance in 1953 in Ian Carmichael's revue, High Spirits at the London Hippodrome. He also co-wrote the stage play Ring For Catty, with Jack Beale. The second of the Carry On films, Carry On Nurse (1959) was based on this play. He appeared in Hancock's The Blood Donor as the long-suffering doctor in charge of the blood transfusion.

After a number of other West End roles he landed that of Bernard in Boeing Boeing at the Apollo Theatre in 1962. The farce, which was almost tailor made for him, attracted major producers to him and he went on to star in Say Who You Are at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1965 and to direct Not Now Darling by Ray Cooney and John Chapman at The Strand Theatre in 1968. In that year, Cargill had his big break when he was offered the chance of his own sitcom on ITV.

Father, Dear Father was written specifically for him and his unique off-beat farcical talent, and he was cast as Patrick Glover, a thriller writer, but an inept father of two teenage daughters. The show ran until 1973 and showcased many other stars, such as Leslie Phillips, Ian Carmichael, Tony Britton, Jeremy Child, Joyce Carey, Donald Sinden, Rodney Bewes, June Whitfield, Richard O'Sullivan, Bill Fraser, Dandy Nichols, Bill Pertwee, Peter Jones, Joan Sims, Richard Wattis, Jack Hulbert, Hugh Paddick, Roy Kinnear and Beryl Reid. The series was produced and directed by William G. Stewart, later to be the presenter of Channel 4 quiz show Fifteen to One.

In 1976 Cargill returned to the TV screens with The Many Wives of Patrick, playing a middle-aged playboy who is trying to divorce his sixth wife in order to remarry his first. This series again showcased many famous stars.

A resurgence in the popularity of farce in the 1980s saw him return to the theatre for the remainder of his career.

Patrick Cargill made a number of films, notably two Carry Ons and The Beatles' Help!

Patrick Cargill was born of middle-class parents living in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex. He was a commissioned officer in the army during the war and spent most of his active service in India. From the mid 1960s he lived near Richmond, Surrey. He spent his time 'resting' at Spring Cottage, his country retreat situated in Sussex. For many years his 'companion' was Vernon Page, an eccentric landscape gardener, poet and lampoon songwriter, until he married in 1984 with Cargill's blessing.

Cargill was not a private man who quietly disliked his TV fame. He would shun the awards ceremonies and star galas in favour of a quiet evening at home playing Mah Jong. He never made any public acknowledgment of his private life as he felt that to admit to being gay would damage his professional image. Notwithstanding his reluctance to come out in this respect, Cargill was happy being gay in his private life and his wit when not in the spotlight reflected that. Once, whilst lunching with Ray Cooney, the theatrical impresario, Cargill wittily observed, when a particularly handsome waiter mistakenly removed his soup spoon, 'Ah look Ray, the dish has run away with the spoon.'

In the later years of his life, Cargill lived in Henley with his last companion, James Camille Markowski.

He died in Richmond, London, aged 77. He had been suffering from a brain tumour.

Christopher Bernau

Christopher Bernau born 2 June 1940 (d. 1989)

Christopher Bernau (born Herbert Augustine Bernau) was an American actor.

Bernau trained in the drama department at the University of California before getting his big break, appearing in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Antony and Cleopatra in 1962. He continued in that role until 1964, when he toured nationally in the production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These roles, in addition to performing at Canada's Stratford Festival, led to an appearance in a story arc on cult Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows in 1969 and 1970.

His most famous role, however, was that of villain Alan Spaulding on the soap opera Guiding Light, a role he played from 1977 to 1984 and again from 1986 until shortly before his death in 1989.

Bernau is considered to be one of the only truly 'out' soap opera actors, as it was fairly well known by both the actors he worked with, and the soap press at large, that he was gay.

Bernau was diagnosed with AIDS but continued to work on Guiding Light. He left the show when he became too ill to show up at work, and he died of a heart attack brought on by complications from AIDS. He is buried at Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, California.

Rupert Everett

Rupert Everett born 29 May 1959

Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He is perhaps the first Hollywood movie star to have a long, mainstream, and successful acting career while being openly gay, and blasé about it.

Rupert Everett was born in Norfolk, England. From the age of 7 he was educated at Farleigh House preparatory school and later was educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, but dropped out of school at 15 and ran away to London to become an actor. In order to support himself, he worked as a male prostitute, or rent boy, as he later admitted to US magazine in 1997. After being dismissed from the Central School of Speech and Drama for insubordination, he travelled to Scotland and got a job in the avant-garde Citizens' Theatre of Glasgow.

His break came with the 1982 West End production of Another Country, playing a gay schoolboy opposite Kenneth Branagh, followed by a film version in 1984 with Colin Firth. He began to develop a promising film career, until he co-starred with Bob Dylan in the huge flop Hearts of Fire (1987).

In 1989 he moved to Paris, writing a novel Hello, Darling, Are You Working? and coming out as gay, a move which some at the time perceived as damaging to his career. Returning to the public eye in The Comfort of Strangers (1990), several films of variable success followed. In 1995 he released a second novel, The Hairdresser of St. Tropez.

Everett's career was revitalised by My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), playing Julia Roberts's gay friend. In 1999, he played Madonna's gay best friend in The Next Best Thing (he also sang backup on her cover of American Pie, which is on the film's soundtrack). He has since appeared in a number of high-profile film roles, often playing heterosexual leads. He is also a Vanity Fair contributing editor.

In 2006 Everett published his memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. In it he revealed he had had a 6-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates. 'I am mystified by my heterosexual affairs — but then I am mystified by most of my relationships,' he said, with the article describing him as bisexual as opposed to homosexual.

But in a radio show with Jonathan Ross, Everett described his heterosexual affairs as resulting from adventurousness: 'I was basically adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything.'

In recent years Everett has expressed the view that his career has been negatively affected by his having come out and gone so far as to advise younger actors against doing so. Whilst his career has seen him achieve varying levels of critical and commercial success through the years, this may be as much due to his limitations as an actor - posh, brittle, slightly camp - as to the industry's view of him as a gay actor.

Helmut Berger

Helmut Berger born 29 May 1944

Helmut Berger is an Austrian actor.

Berger (whose real name is Helmut Steinberger) was born in Bad Ischl, Austria, into a family of hoteliers and although he had no interest in gastronomy or the hospitality industry, he initially trained and worked in this area. At the age of 18, he moved to London, where he did odd-jobs whilst simultaneously taking acting classes. After studying languages in Perugia, Berger moved to Rome.

In 1964, he first met Luchino Visconti, whose life partner he later became. Visconti gave him his first acting role in the movie Le Streghe (1967) (in the episode La Strega Bruciata Viva), but he attained international fame playing Martin von Essenbeck in Visconti's The Damned (1969). In this film, in what is perhaps his best known scene, he mimics the role of Lola, as played by Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel . However, the role of Ludwig II of Bavaria in Visconti's Ludwig can be considered the pinnacle of his acting career: here he portrays the monarch from his blooming youth, to his dissolute final years – and in the process reveals a nervous and paranoid lord of decay drawn from his own weaknesses and psychological depths.

Visconti also introduced him to new people. Musicians and models first (in London), and then Berger was introduced to international artists - conductor Leonard Bernstein, opera singer Maria Callas, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev - with whom Berger had an affair; Nureyev was sexually hyper-active, but Berger disliked the Russian's passion for garlic and vodka. Nureyev wanted to live with Berger but he could not give him the security of Visconti. For a short time, Nureyev was his lover, but Visconti was his husband and his father-figure.

Visconti's death in 1976 plunged Berger into a deep personal and financial crisis. Visconti's will, in which Berger was apparently named as heir, could not be found. A former friend and companion of Visconti, the director Franco Zeffirelli, has subsequently castigated Berger publicly, accusing him of exploiting his mentor. In addition to a suicide attempt on the first anniversary of Visconti's death, Berger has also had alcohol and drug-related problems.

He has made appearances in various B-movies and smaller prestige pictures such as Ash Wednesday (1973) with Elizabeth Taylor. Berger has also worked in television, most notably in the role of Peter De Vilbis on Dynasty. Since Visconti's death no director has been able to fulfill Berger's potential again.

Berger, with his dissipated lifestyle and openly acknowledged bisexuality, has been a welcome guest on talk shows telling for example of erotic adventures with Marisa Berenson, whom he supposedly wished to marry, and Mick Jagger.

In 2004, to the great interest of the Austrian media, Berger moved from Rome to Salzburg to live with his mother; he denied rumours of financial difficulties, explaining he was merely looking for a new apartment in Rome. He also declared he had come off all drugs.

In 2007, he received the honour of a Special Teddy at the Berlin Film Festival for his overall professional achievements.

Henry Kendall

Henry Kendall born 28 May 1897 (d. 1962)

Henry Kendall was an English stage and film actor, theatre director and an immaculately stylish revue artiste.

Kendall was educated at the City of London School, and made his first appearance on the stage in September 1914 at the Lyceum Theatre. He had a distinguished war career, serving as a Captain in the Royal Air Force from 1916 to 1919, and on demobilisation was awarded the Air Force Cross.

He played the leading role of Reggie Ogden in the film The Shadow in 1933, and also starred in Alfred Hitchcock's 'bravest failure', Rich and Strange, US title East of Shanghai (1931).

Kendall dismissed his own cinematic work, although he appeared in a number of films in the 1930s and after. His appearances on the London stage were many however throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

As a gifted West End revue artiste he appeared in Charlot's Revue at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1924 and Charlot's Masquerade at the Cambridge Theatre in 1930. He also enjoyed great success co-starring with Hermione Gingold in the three long-running Sweet and Low revues; this was followed in June 1948 by the A la Carte revue at the Savoy Theatre.

But a greater contribution in this field was his appearance with Hermione Baddeley and Hermione Gingold ('The Two Hermiones'), Walter Crisham and Wilfred Hyde-White, in Leslie Julian Jones's revue Rise Above It, first at the Q Theatre in January 1941, when Hedley Briggs was nominally directing; then in two West End editions of the show which ran for a total of 380 performances at the Comedy Theatre opening in June 1941 and again in December 1941, when he was both starring and directing show.

As he reports in his autobiography: 'Of all forms of theatrical entertainment, revue is the most bitchy. The material is bitchy, the artists are bitchy and, strangely enough, the average revue audience is bitchy.'

In addition to a busy career as an actor and entertainer, he was frequently engaged as a director, notably staging the first productions of See How They Run (Peterborough Rep, tour and Q Theatre 1944; Comedy Theatre 1945), and The Shop at Sly Corner (St Martin's Theatre 1945).

He also directed numerous plays at the Embassy Theatre and Q Theatre.

Alec McCowen

Alec McCowen born 26 May 1925

Alec McCowen is an English actor, best known for classical roles including Shakespeare.

He was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the son of Mary and Duncan McCowen. He was educated at the Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

McCowen made his film debut in 1953 in a British film, The Cruel Sea, but achieved his greatest successes on stage. He made his London debut at the Arts Theatre in Ivanov in 1950, and had rising success as Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge (1954), Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker (1954), and appearances at the Old Vic Theatre in 1959/60 in many Shakespearean plays, notably as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. His breakthrough came as Friar William Rolfe in Hadrian the Seventh, for which he won an Evening Standard Award for the London production and a Tony nomination after taking it to Broadway. His next big successes were in Molière's The Misanthrope opposite Diana Rigg (1973) and the role of psychiastrist Martin Dysart in the world premire of Peter Shaffer's Equus (1973), but his greatest achievement was his one-man performance of the complete text of Saint Mark's Gospel (1978), for which he received worldwide acclaim and another Tony nomination.

McCowen has appeared in the films Never Say Never Again (as Q), Cry Freedom, Frenzy , The Age of Innocence, and Travels With My Aunt, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He notably appeared in the film based on the life of Cynthia Payne Personal Services (1987) with Julie Walters. He starred in the lead role of the 1980s TV series Mr Palfrey of Westminster.

His partner, the actor Geoffrey Burridge died in 1987 from an AIDS-related illness.

In 1989 he was selected to appear on the celebrity surprise show This Is Your Life but was aghast at the programme's complete failure to mention Geoffrey Burridge, who had died less than two years previously and McCowen - bravely for the time - insisted that his late partner be acknowledged.

John Dall

John Dall born 26 May 1918 (d. 1971)

John Dall was an American actor born in New York City.

He is best remembered today for the part of the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, but first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the tutelage of Bette Davis in The Corn is Green, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He made a number of other films but worked primarily in theatre.

Rope was inspired by the notorious Leopold and Loeb murder case, Dall and co-star Farley Granger - also gay -were cast as two affluent young men who strangle an acquaintance merely as an intellectual challenge to commit the perfect murder.

Although the two men's sexuality is never made explicit in the film, the relationship between Granger's and Dall's characters has a strong homoerotic subtext, skilfully engineered by Hitchcock and his actors through staging, art direction, and nuance. 'It was just a thing assumed,' Granger said many years later of his character's homosexuality. 'Either you got it or you didn't.'

As the film's screenwriter, Arthur Laurents, who was Farley Granger's lover at the time, explained, 'There wasn't a word of dialogue that said [the two men] were lovers or homosexual, but there wasn't a scene between them where it wasn't clearly implied.'

After a long absence from the screen, Dall returned in 1960 to character roles in the costume dramas Spartacus (1960) and Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961).

John Dall died in Los Angeles from a heart attack in 1971 aged 52.

Paul Winfield

Paul Winfield born 22 May 1939 (d. 2004)

Paul Edward Winfield was an Academy Award-nominated American television and film actor. Winfield was openly gay in his private life, but remained discreet about it in the public eye.

Winfield was born in Los Angeles, California. He first became well-known to audiences when he appeared for several years opposite Diahann Carroll on the US television series Julia. He also starred as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978 miniseries King. In 1973, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1972 film Sounder, becoming the third African American to ever earn a nomination for a leading role, after Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier. Though it should be noted that Sounder co-star Cicely Tyson was also nominated that year for a leading role, for Best Actress. He appeared in the 2003 Disney-produced television remake of Sounder. Winfield played the part of 'Jim the Slave' in Huckleberry Finn (1974) which was a musical.

Winfield also starred in more recent miniseries, including Roots: The Next Generations, Queen: The Story of an American Family and Scarlett.

Winfield gained many fans for several of his brief but memorable roles in science fiction TV programs and movies. He was Captain Clark Terrell in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and a friendly but crusty cop partnered with Lance Henriksen in The Terminator. On the small screen, he appeared as General Richard Franklin, father of regular character Dr Stephen Franklin, on Babylon 5 and as an alien captain in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. He also provided voices on the cartoons Spider-Man, The Magic School Bus, Batman Beyond, and The Simpsons, on the latter voicing the Don King parody Lucius Sweet. He was 'The Mirror' on the TV show The Charmings (1987-1988). He also played the long-lost father of Harriette Winslow and her sister Rachel Crawford on Family Matters. At the time of his death, he was a narrator for the A&E show City Confidential.

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance in the King and Roots: The Next Generations. He won an Emmy Award, in 1995, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, for his appearance in an episode of the CBS drama Picket Fences.

Throughout his career, Winfield frequently managed to perform in the theatre. His only Broadway production, Checkmates, in 1988, co-starring Ruby Dee, was also the Broadway debut of Denzel Washington. He also appeared in productions Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Winfield died of a heart attack in 2004; he was 64. His long-time partner of 30 years, architect Charles Gillan Jr., preceded him in death in 2002.

Raymond Burr

Raymond Burr born 21 May 1917 (d. 1993)

American actor Raymond Burr will probably be forever associated with two successful TV roles - Perry Mason (1957-66 & 1985-93) and Ironside (1967-1975). Although he notably appeared in A Place In the Sun (1951) and as the murderer in Hitchcock`s Rear Window (1954).

An intensely private man, it would appear that Burr created a smokescreen to conceal his homosexuality by inventing two wives and a son. One of his fictional wives died in a plane crash, one from cancer, his son from leukemia aged 10. He was actually briefly married, but that marriage was annulled.

His real 'marriage' was with an actor he met while filming Perry Mason. Raymond Burr and Robert Benevides bought a Fijian island in 1963, ranched cattle, farmed orchids and invested in improving the lives of the islanders. In 1983, they sold the island, and moved with their successful orchid business to California. In the 1980s they donated greenhouses, much of their orchid collections and over $1m worth of art and antiques to a California University. They started a successful vineyard which continues today.

In 1985, Burr reprised his role as Perry Mason in a series of successful TV movies, with Benevides as producer. By the early 1990s, Burr`s health was failing, and in 1993 he retired to their farm where he died from cancer.

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett born 9 May 1934

Alan Bennett is an English author and actor noted for his work, his boyish appearance and his sonorous Yorkshire accent.

Alan Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, Yorkshire. The son of a butcher, Bennett attended Leeds Modern School (a former state grammar school), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his National Service, and gained a place at Cambridge University. However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford University and went on to take a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of future successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at Oxford for several years researching and teaching Medieval History before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic.

He claims that as an adolescent he assumed he would grow up to be a Church of England clergyman, for no better reason than that he looked like one.

In August 1960, Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. After the Festival, the show continued in London and New York. He also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor.

Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a strong and distinctive Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.

Many of Bennett's characters are unfortunate and downtrodden, or meek and overlooked. Life has brought them to an impasse, or else passed them by altogether. In many cases they have met with disappointment in the realm of sex and intimate relationships, largely through tentativeness and a failure to connect with others.

Bennett is both unsparing and compassionate in laying bare his characters' frailties. This can be seen in his television plays for LWT in the late 1970s and the BBC in the early 1980s, and in the 1987 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992. This was a sextet of poignantly comic pieces, each of which depicted several stages in the character's decline from an initial state of denial or ignorance of their predicament, through a slow realisation of the hopelessness of their situation, and progressing to a bleak or ambiguous conclusion. A second set of six Talking Heads pieces followed a decade later.

In his 2005 prose collection Untold Stories Bennett has written candidly and movingly of the mental illness that afflicted his mother and other family members. Much of his work draws on his Leeds background and while he is celebrated for his acute observations of a particular type of northern speech ("It'll take more than Dairy Box to banish memories of Pearl Harbour"), the range and daring of his work is often undervalued – his television play The Old Crowd, for example, includes shots of the director and technical crew, while his stage play The Lady in the Van includes two characters named Alan Bennett. The Lady in the Van was based on his experiences with a tramp called Miss Shepherd who lived on Bennett's driveway in a dilapidated van for fifteen years.

In 1994 Bennett adapted his popular and much-praised 1991 play The Madness of George III for the cinema as The Madness of King George. The film received four Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Bennett's writing and the performances of Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren. It won the award for best art direction.

Bennett's critically-acclaimed The History Boys won three Olivier Awards in February 2005, for Best New Play, Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), and Best Direction (Nicholas Hytner), having previously won Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actor and Best Play. Bennett himself received an Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.

The History Boys also went on to win six Tony Awards on Broadway, including best play, best performance by a leading actor in a play (Richard Griffiths), best performance by a featured actress in a play (Frances de la Tour), and best direction of a play (Nicholas Hytner).

A film version of The History Boys, with most of the original West End and Broadway cast was released in the UK in 2006.

Bennett refused an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1998, in protest of its accepting funding for a named chair in honour of press baron Rupert Murdoch. He also declined a CBE in 1988 and a knighthood in 1996. Despite refusing an honorary doctorate from his old university, Bennett was made an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford in 1987. He was also awarded a D.Lit by the University of Leeds in 1990.

In September 2005, Bennett revealed that, in 1997, he had undergone treatment for cancer, and described the illness as a 'bore'. His chances of survival were given as being 'much less' than 50%. He began Untold Stories (published 2005) thinking it would be published posthumously. In the event his cancer went into remission. In the autobiographical sketches which form a large part of the book Bennett writes openly for the first time about his homosexuality (Bennett has had relationships with women as well, although this is only touched upon in Untold Stories). Previously Bennett had referred to questions about his sexuality as being like asking a man dying of thirst to choose between Perrier or Malvern mineral water.

Bennett has lived in London's Camden Town for thirty years, and shares his house with his partner of fifteen years, Rupert Thomas.

Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino born 6 May 1895 (d. 1926)

Born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antoguolla in Italy, he arrived in the US in 1913 and eventually became a taxi dancer and instructor, and eventually, an exhibition dancer. He made his way across the country to California, where he played a number of small parts in silent movies. He was impressive enough to be cast as the lead in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921); the film was a success and made him a star. Later the same year, The Sheik made him a legend.

In 1926, he collapsed with a perforated ulcer; after an apparently successful operation peritonitis set in and 8 days later, the greatest romantic hero of the silent era was dead. He was just 31 and had been a star for a mere five years.

100,000 distraught women swarmed his funeral, and many rumours abound, but male audiences were offended by Valentino's extravagant dress, colourful spats, make-up, and willingness to display his body on screen. Valentino disrupted his era's rigid codes of sex and gender.

Although his legendary star status is assured, his legacy of work died with the silent film era and while he retains an extraordinary beauty, glamour and allure on screen, his body of work is insufficiently substantial to stand among cinematic greats - like his style of acting, Valentino's work is frozen in time and almost incomprehensible to modern viewers with the heavy make-up and exaggerated mime and melodrama of silent acting

Accused at the time of downgrading masculinity with his perceived effeminacy, time has not been kind and Valentino seems as camp now as then.

Valentino's sexuality remains ambiguous, but rumours of his homosexuality were rife among Hollywood gay circles, despite (or because of) his marriages to and divorces from Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova, both lesbian.

Antony Hamilton

Antony Hamilton born 4 May 1952 (d. 1995)

Born in Liverpool, England, but adopted and raised in Australia, Antony Hamilton studied ballet and toured with the Australian Ballet Company before moving into modelling.

His handsome looks and dance training made the move into acting inevitable and after several TV specials, Hamilton was offered the role of male model/undercover agent in hit TV show Undercover, as a replacement for Jon Erik Hexum, who had been killed in a tragic on-set accident.

He was briefly considered as a successor to Roger Moore as James Bond. He continued to work in film and TV, notably the revived TV series of Mission Impossible and The Howling IV, until his death in March, 1995 from an AIDS-related illness.

Lindsay Kemp

Lindsay Kemp born 3 May 1938

Lindsay Kemp is a British dancer, actor, teacher, mime artist and choreographer.

Born in South Shields, Kemp was raised in Yorkshire and attended Bradford Art College before studying dance with Hilde Holger and mime with Marcel Marceau.

Kemp formed his own dance company in the early sixties and first attracted attention with an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968. Despite thirty years of worldwide touring with his company and the occasional film and television appearances, Kemp is ironically best known by devotees of Kate Bush and David Bowie, both former students and, briefly, members of Kemp's company (Bowie as a performer, Bush as a wardrobe assistant). Indeed, it is rumoured - a rumour begun by Kemp himself - that he had a brief but volatile affair with Bowie in the late sixties, culminating in a failed suicide attempt more notable for its melodrama than sincerity of purpose.

Kemp’s style of performance, a unique and seductive blend of Butoh, Mime, Burlesque, Drag and Music Hall, has at different times been described as fascinating, colourful and self-indulgent, but rarely fails to attract critical acclaim and a loyal fanbase.

He staged and performed in David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust concerts at London's Rainbow Theatre in August 1972, and, with Jack Birkett (more on him below), appears in the promotional video for Bowie's single John, I'm Only Dancing.

Kemp’s film roles include a dancer and cabaret performer in Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane (1976) and Jubilee (1977) respectively, a pantomime dame in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998) and the wonderfully camp pub landlord Alder MacGregor in Anthony Shaffer's The Wicker Man (1973).

During the early 70s, Kemp was a popular and inspirational teacher of dance/mime with a regular two and a half hour session at the Dance Centre in Floral Street, Covent Garden. This was in the days before the Dance Centre became an up-market private club, and anyone could and did drop in. Classes were sometimes taken by Lindsay's unsighted friend Jack Birkett (aka 'The Incredible Orlando') whose flamboyance and mastery was such that uninitiated newcomers could go through a whole session without realising that they were being taught (and corrected) by a blind teacher. It was said that Lindsay had 'saved' Birkett from despair by re-training him after he lost his sight.

Lindsay Kemp now lives near Rome, Italy.

Leslie Jordan

Leslie Jordan born 29 April 1955

Leslie Allen Jordan is an Emmy Award-winning American actor.

Hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee and at a height of just 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m), Jordan has become an instantly recognisable face in film and television. He is most well known for his television work - including guest appearances on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Star Trek: Voyager and Boston Legal.

He is best known for his memorable appearances as Karen's pretentious rival, Beverley Leslie on the hit series Will & Grace. For that role he received an Emmy Award for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (2006).

He is also an accomplished stage actor and playwright.

In 2007 Jordan toured the States performing his one-man stage comedy Like a Dog on Linoleum to rave reviews. In the show, Jordan tells stories of the high and low points of his life; from his father's death in a plane crash when he was just 11 years old, to his battles with substance abuse and weakness for street hustlers.

Leslie Jordan, who is openly gay, has recently starred in the pilot episode of Laugh Out. Laugh Out is the world's first interactive, gay-themed comedy show.

Graham Payn

Graham Payn born 25 April 1918 (d. 2005)

Graham Payn was born in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. He was a British actor and singer, gay and the life partner of the late Sir Noel Coward for thirty years.

Payn moved with his family to England when he was eleven years old (circa 1928). He became a boy soprano in concerts and in boy's choirs. He made his first stage appearance at thirteen at the Palladium, as 'Curly' in Peter Pan. At the age of fourteen he appeared in Noel Coward's revue Words and Music. Payn's audition consisted of a tap dance routine which he performed while singing 'Nearer, My God, to Thee'.

In 1945, Coward wrote a leading role in Sigh No More specifically for Payn.

Payn appeared nearly continuously in the West End for the next twenty years of his life. He appeared on Broadway in Coward's Tonight at 8:30, and in films including The Italian Job.

Payn died at the couple's home in Switzerland, aged 87 on 4 November 2005.

After Coward's death in 1973, with Sheridan Morley and Cole Lesley, Payn wrote Noel Coward and His Friends (1979) and was one of the editors of The Noel Coward Diaries that he dedicated to Lesley. Graham Payn wrote his own autobiography in 1994.

John Cameron Mitchell

John Cameron Mitchell born 21 April 1963

John Cameron Mitchell is an American writer, actor, and director.

Mitchell was born in El Paso, Texas. The son of a retired general in the US Army, he grew up on army bases and in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he attended Catholic schools. His mother is from Scotland and emigrated to the United States as a young woman.

In 1998, Mitchell wrote and starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, an off-Broadway musical with songs by Stephen Trask about Hedwig, a transgendered rock musician chasing after an ex-lover who plagiarised her songs. Three years later, he directed the feature film version of the play, reprising his role as Hedwig. Both the play and the film were critical hits and have spawned cult followings.

Mitchell has also appeared as Dickon in the Broadway musical The Secret Garden, as well as in the acclaimed off-Broadway musical Hello Again, for which he received a Drama Desk nomination in 1994. He can be heard on the original cast recordings of both shows.

After the success of Hedwig, Mitchell expressed an interest in financing, writing, and directing a film which would be of high quality, but would incorporate explicit sex in a naturalistic way. After a two-year talent search and shooting process, Shortbus was presented in May 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival.

Mitchell was the executive producer of the 2004 film Tarnation, a critically praised and award-winning documentary about the life of a gay man named Jonathan Caouette. In 2005, he directed the music videos for Bright Eyes' First Day of My Life and the Scissor Sisters' Filthy/Gorgeous, the latter of which was banned from American MTV for its explicit ambisexual content. The openly gay Mitchell has appeared as a pundit on Politically Incorrect and various VH1 programs.

He directed the 2010 film Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Aaron Eckhart, adapted from David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name.

Mitchell lives in New York City.