David Pevsner

David Pevsner is an American actor, singer, dancer, and writer born on December 31, 1958, in Skokie, Illinois. He attended Niles East High School in the same Chicago suburb, where he participated in the theater program and was voted "Most Versatile" in a school survey. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Pevsner's stage career spans several decades and encompasses Broadway productions, off-Broadway work, and solo performance. Among his earliest credits was a role in an 1980s revival of A Flash of Lightning, the play written by Augustin Daly, in which he portrayed the character Terry. His Broadway work ran from 1987 to 1990 and included productions of South Pacific and the 1990 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, where he played Mendel, the rabbi's son, and understudied the role of Motel, performed by Jack Kenny. He returned to the stage in the 1991 revival of Rags, the 1986 musical set in 1910, taking on multiple roles including Saul and Nathan.

In 1995, Pevsner appeared in the theatrical play Party, portraying Kevin, a college teacher who hosts a gathering at his apartment; the role was later assumed by Marc Wolf. From 1996 to 1998, he performed in the two-act gay revue musical When Pigs Fly. He was part of the writing team for the 1999 musical Naked Boys Singing!, contributing three songs, among them "Perky Little Porn Star" and "The Naked Maid." In 2009, he appeared in F*cking Men, the explicit play written by Joe DiPietro, portraying Jack, a man who commits adultery while his husband does the same.

Pevsner also wrote and performed two one-person shows. To Bitter and Back, a semi-autobiographical piece, was staged in 2002, and Musical Comedy Whore, described by Broadway World as a musical autobiography, followed in 2013.

His screen work includes both film and television appearances, the majority of them in supporting or minor roles. He appeared in The Fluffer in 2001, David Searching in 1997, and Adam & Steve in 2006, among other films. He portrayed Elizabeth Taylor's doctor in the 2012 Lifetime television film Liz & Dick. That same year, he took on the lead role of Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge & Marley, a film adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol presenting a gay interpretation of the story. On television, his credits include a bartender role in an episode of NYPD Blue, as well as appearances on Modern Family and Grey's Anatomy. He starred as Ross Stein in the gay web drama series Old Dogs & New Tricks, which ran from 2011 to 2016 across four seasons; his character is a former 1990s television star married to a more successful partner. He also appeared as the Host in Disorganized Zone, a web science fiction comedy series and parody of The Twilight Zone, and as Jamison in a 2015 episode of Coffee House Chronicles.

In 2016, Pevsner released the solo album Most Versatile, a title drawn from his high school survey distinction. The album's working title had been Shameless, taken from his Tumblr blog. Its thirteen songs explore gay experiences, and Pevsner wrote the lyrics for all of them, solely composing seven and co-composing five others; Michael Skloff composed one track, "I Gotta Give It Up to Love." Guest artists on the album include Jim J. Bullock and Maxwell Caulfield. Two songs from Naked Boys Singing!, "Perky Little Porn Star" and "The Naked Maid," are included alongside original material. The album's cover art pays homage to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., a design chosen by graphic artist Hank Hudson from two finalists that also included a 1977 photograph of Pevsner from his high school survey; that photograph was ultimately placed on an inner panel of the album. The cover was photographed by Gabriel Goldberg.

Pevsner is Jewish and gay. He was raised in Skokie, Illinois.