David Shankbone · CC BY 3.0

Harvey Fierstein won Tony Awards for both writing and starring in Torch Song Trilogy, then won two more for La Cage aux Folles and for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray -- one of very few people to win Tonys as both a playwright and an actor. As one of the first openly gay public figures in American entertainment, he helped make gay and lesbian characters a normal subject for mainstream theater rather than tragedy alone, and later wrote the books for Kinky Boots and Newsies.