Born On This Day- April 21st... Hedwig's John Cameron Mitchell

The always boyish John Cameron Mitchell has impressive theater credits. He has won 2 OBIE Awards & several drama critics’ awards for his stage acting. He's directed a Tennessee Williams play starring Cynthia Nixon & Peter Sarsgaard. He's even been in action movies & even a Spike Lee joint. Mitchell played Huckleberry Finn in the Broadway musical Big River, Dickon on Broadway in The Secret Garden, & in the original cast of the Off Broadway musical Hello Again. He received Drama Desk nominations for the roles, & he can be heard on the original cast recordings. He appeared in the original cast of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation & starred in Larry Kramer's The Destiny of Me, for which he received an Obie Award.

But with his film adaptation of his own Off-Broadway smash, in which he stars as a transsexual punk-rock godess John Cameron Mitchell may forever be known as the title character of Hedwig & the Angry Inch. The product of an East Berlin upbringing & a botched sex change (the "Angry Inch"), Hedwig is a mix of Ziggy Stardust & Lady Gaga, she is the bitter lead singer of a failing band that belts out cathartic hardcore tunes catchy that audiences have been singing along at festival screenings (the film won the Audience & Director Award Sundance).

Mitchell is the opposite of his greatest creation. He is a soft spoken & unpretentious waif of 47 years old, but looks a decade younger. He created Hedwig with New York musician Stephen Trask more than decade ago as way to be in the spotlight on stage at the NYC's notorious rock n' roll drag bar Squeezebox. The Husband & I saw Hedwig memorably, 12 years ago at the gloriously rundown Jane Street Theatre in the West Villllage.

I was driven to tears by & very affected by his film-Shortbus which caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival where viewers were shocked at the film's depiction of actual, non-simulated sex. Variety reported that it was “unquestionably the most sexually graphic American narrative feature ever made outside the realm of the porn industry”. The film features one of my favorite young singer/songwriters- Jay Brannan. I find this film to be impossibly moving.

He also filmed Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig which uses Hedwig's music performed by other musicians including Yoko Ono & Cyndi Lauper to chronicle the lives of 4 teenagers from The Harvey Milk School in NYC.


Next up for Mitchell is his direction of the film adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaires play- Rabbit Hole starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest & Sandra Oh, & a revival of Hedwig starring its creator.


Mitchell should live in Portland. He is perfect for this city, but he lives in NYC. He is proudly a Radical Faerie.