John Barrowman, MBE was born today, March 11, in 1967. He is a Scottish-American actor, singer, presenter and writer. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he moved to the United States with his family in 1975. Encouraged by his high school teachers, Barrowman studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London's West End.
Since his debut in professional theater, Barrowman has played lead roles in various musicals both in the West End and on Broadway, including Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard and Matador. After appearing in Sam Mendes' production of The Fix, he was nominated for the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical and, in the early 2000s, returned to the role of Billy Crocker in the revival of Anything Goes. His most recent West End credit was in the 2009 production of La Cage aux Folles.
Alongside his theatrical career, Barrowman has appeared in various films including the musical biopic De-Lovely (2004) and musical comedy The Producers (2005). Before venturing into British television, he was in the American television dramas Titans and Central Park West (from which he was fired for being gay), but he is better known for his acting and presenting work for the BBC that includes his work for CBBC in its earlier years, his self-produced entertainment program Tonight's the Night, and his BAFTA Cymru-nominated role of Captain Jack Harkness in the science fiction series Doctor Who and Torchwood. He has most recently appeared in Scandal, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow.
Barrowman is also featured on more than a dozen musical theater recordings including cover tunes found on his 2007 album, Another Side, and 2008's Music Music Music. Both albums accrued places on the UK Albums Chart, as did his self-titled John Barrowman (2010), which reached number 11, his highest chart placing to date.
Furthermore, Barrowman has published two memoirs and autobiographies, Anything Goes (2008) and I Am What I Am (2009), with his sister Carole as co-author. The siblings also teamed up to write a novel, Hollow Earth (2012). The second book in the series, Bone Quill, has been released in the UK and was released in the US in July 2013.
Barrowman is openly gay: he met his husband, Scott Gill, during a production of Rope at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1993, after Gill came to see Barrowman in the play. The couple have houses in London, England; Cardiff, Wales; and Palm Springs, California. Barrowman and Gill entered into a civil partnership on December 27, 2006. A small ceremony was held in Cardiff with friends and family, with the cast of Torchwood and executive producer Russell T Davies as guests. The pair were legally married in the state of California on July 2, 2013, following the United States Supreme Court's decision to deny an appeal to overturning California Proposition 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry.
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