Anthony Crivello

Anthony Crivello is an American actor born on August 2, 1955, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Josephine (née Mussomeli) and Vincent J. Crivello. He attended Saint Rita's Grade School on Milwaukee's East Side before graduating from Saint Thomas More High School in 1973, and was later inducted into that school's Alumni Hall of Fame in 1995. He received his Equity card at age 19 playing Conrad Birdie in a production of Bye Bye Birdie at Milwaukee's Melody Top Theatre. Early in his career he participated in 12 community theatre productions, including three at Sunset Playhouse directed by Alan Furlan and Mary H. Strong. His acting teachers have included Tony Greco, Estelle Parsons, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Bain, Martin Landau, Michael Howard, Terry Schreiber, and Mary H. Strong, and he studied comic improvisation with Del Close at The Second City in Chicago. His vocal coach for over thirty years has been Anne Perillo of DePaul University. He is a lifetime member of the Actors Studio in New York City and Los Angeles.

Crivello entered the Chicago theater scene in 1979, originating the role of Felix "The Filth Fiend" Linder in the original cast of John R. Powers' Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? at Chicago's Forum Theatre. In 1980, director Harold Prince cast him as Che in a national touring company of Evita, and Prince subsequently brought him to Broadway in 1981 to replace Mandy Patinkin in the closing cast of the original production, marking Crivello's Broadway debut. Following his run in Evita, he appeared off-Broadway in Wendy Kesselman's The Juniper Tree and in a Lincoln Center production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure directed by Mark Lamos.

He next starred as the Killer in The News, first in Jupiter, Florida, where he received a Carbonelle Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor, then at Westport Country Playhouse, and ultimately on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre. He joined the original Broadway cast of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's Les Misérables, directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird and produced by Cameron Mackintosh, initially playing Grantaire before taking over the leading role of Javert ten months later. He later reprised the role of Grantaire in the tenth-anniversary concert of Les Misérables at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

In 1993, Crivello starred as Valentin in the Kander and Ebb musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by Harold Prince. He had originated the role in the London West End production prior to its Broadway engagement and received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination during the show's tryouts in Toronto. His Broadway performance earned him the 1993 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. In 1999, he appeared on Broadway at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Michael John LaChiusa's Marie Christine, directed by Graciela Daniele, playing Dante Keyes opposite Audra McDonald and Mary Testa.

Crivello's Broadway credits also include the 2012–2013 Lincoln Center Theatre revival of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy at the Belasco Theatre, in which he played Eddie Fuseli alongside Tony Shalhoub, Seth Numrich, Yvonne Strahovski, and Michael Aronov, directed by Bartlett Sher. In 2014, he appeared in the Off-Broadway production of Heathers at New World Stages, directed by Andy Fickman.

Beyond Broadway, Crivello accumulated a substantial body of regional and international theater work. He starred in the Goodman Theater of Chicago production of The House of Martin Guerre, receiving Chicago's Joseph Jefferson Award for his portrayal of the title role. He appeared in the John Caird and Paul Gordon musical Jane Eyre, first in development in Wichita, Kansas in 1994 and then in a 1996 Toronto staging, for which he received a second Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for his portrayal of Edward Fairfax Rochester. He received nominations for the Los Angeles Ovation Award, the Garland Award, the Robby Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Musical for Do I Hear a Waltz? at the Pasadena Playhouse, directed by David Lee. He starred in Steve Martin's adaptation of The Underpants at the Geffen Playhouse, directed by John Rando, and in David Ives' adaptation of A Flea in Her Ear for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, directed by Gary Griffin, earning a second Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for the latter. In August 2005, he participated in a workshop production of Zhivago at the La Jolla Playhouse, directed by Des McAnuff, based on the Boris Pasternak novel with a book by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon. He played the Mysterious Man in a star-studded production of Into the Woods at the Hollywood Bowl.

In 2006, director Hal Prince cast Crivello in the Las Vegas production of The Phantom of the Opera as one of two actors rotating in the title role. He went on to perform the role of the Phantom exclusively, accumulating over 2,400 performances by September 2012 when the production closed, six years after it opened.

In 2015 and 2016, Crivello starred as Louis Prima in producer Hershey Felder's Louis and Keely Live at the Sahara, directed by Taylor Hackford and written by Hackford, Vanessa Claire Stewart, and Jake Broder, with Stewart playing Keely Smith. The production played at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, and the role earned Crivello his third Joseph Jefferson Award nomination. In 2017, he portrayed Al McGuire, the Marquette University basketball coach and NBC broadcaster, in the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre one-man play McGuire, written by Dick Enberg. He won the 2017 Wisconsin Footlights Award for Outstanding Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for that performance, and an eight-minute presentation of the show was staged at the 2017 Wisconsin Sports Awards on May 20 at the University of Wisconsin Field House. He reprised the role in a relaunched touring production in 2022 at Milwaukee's Next Act Theatre.

Outside of theater, Crivello hosted a radio program called Tony Crivello and The Sicilians on FOX Sports 920 AM in Las Vegas in 2008 and has worked as a ring announcer and commentator for ESPN2's Kickboxing Championships. He holds stock in the NFL's Green Bay Packers. He is an Honored Member of Marquette University's Century of Scholarship, received Marquette University's College of Speech and Communications Communicator of the Year Award in 2003, and has been inducted into the Marquette University Hall of Fame, with his image displayed in Johnston Hall in the Diederich College of Communication. He is listed in Who's Who in America. Crivello married actress and commercial talent agent Dori Rosenthal on May 14, 2005, and they have two children together.