Out100: Joe Mantello

Photography by Danielle Levitt

One of the most successful Broadway directors (Wicked, Take Me Out, Other Desert Cities), Mantello directed Bette Midler in her one-woman show, I'll Eat You Last, this year and says his recent work with Laurie Metcalf (The Other Place) has been some of the most rewarding. Mantello starred in the 2011 Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (he was nominated for a Tony for his performance as Ned Weeks) and will appear in the Ryan Murphy-directed HBO movie version, coming in spring 2014, as a member of the ensemble cast.

"To be involved with it really was a dream come true," he says. "I've loved Larry for such a long time. He's been one of my heroes and to meet him as a young man and begin this relationship with him, as fraught as it could be sometimes, has been beyond anything I could have ever imagined."

Photographed in Times Square in New York City on August 29, 2013

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