Thursday, September 21, 2017

Born Today: Kinky Boots Tony Winner Billy Porter


Happy Birthday to Billy Porter, born today, September 21, in 1969, in Pittsburgh, PA. Porter is a singer; theater, film, and television actor; and vocal coach.

Porter won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Lola in Kinky Boots. Porter also won the Drama Desk Award for O
utstanding Actor in a Musical and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical.

He played the Teen Angel in the 1994 revival of Grease! In
 September 2010, Porter appeared as Belize in Signature Theatre Company's 20th Anniversary production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.

Porter has also appeared in a number of films. He played a major role as Shiniqua, a drag queen who befriends Angel (David Norona) and Lee (Keivyn McNeill Graves) in Seth Michael Donsky's Twisted (1997), an adaptation of Oliver Twist.

He has had a musical career with three solo albums released, Billy Porter on DV8/A&M Records in 1997, At the Corner of Broadway + Soul in 2005 on Sh-K-Boom Records and Billy's Back on Broadway (Concord Music Group) in 2014. He as featured in a number of songs in the tribute album It's Only Life: The Songs of John Bucchino in 2006 released on PS Classics. He also covered "Only One Road" that was included on the Human Rights Campaign compilation album Love Rocks.

Porter and Adam Smith were married on January 14, 2017.


No comments: