Joe Mantello

Joe Mantello, born December 27, 1962, in Rockford, Illinois, is an American actor and director whose career has spanned Broadway performance and direction from 1993 through at least 2018. The son of Judy and Richard Mantello, an accountant of Italian ancestry, Mantello was raised Catholic and trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts before relocating to New York City in 1984. He co-founded the Edge Theater alongside actress Mary-Louise Parker and writer Peter Hedges, and is a founding member of the Naked Angels theater company as well as an associate artist at the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Mantello launched his Broadway acting career in 1993 with Tony Kushner's two-part epic Angels in America, playing Louis in both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. The role earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He returned to the stage as a performer more than a decade later, taking on the role of Ned Weeks in the 2011 Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, a performance that brought him a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play and contributed to the production's Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance. In 2017, Mantello appeared on Broadway once more, playing Tom in Sam Gold's revival of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie at the Belasco Theatre, a production that starred Sally Field as Amanda Wingfield.

Alongside his acting work, Mantello built a substantial career as a director, winning the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2003 for Take Me Out and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 2004 for Assassins. His directing credits span a wide range of styles and genres, including the original Broadway production of Wicked in 2003, a revival of Glengarry Glen Ross in 2005, Stephen Karam's The Humans in 2016, Harvey Fierstein's Casa Valentina in 2014, Sting's The Last Ship in 2014, Three Tall Women in 2018, and The Boys in the Band in 2018. He also directed Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities at the Booth Theater in 2011 and the Off-Broadway world premiere of the musical Dogfight at Second Stage Theater in 2012. Earlier in his career, Mantello began directing works including The Vagina Monologues, Dead Man Walking, and The Santaland Diaries.

Mantello was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2018 and was featured in the 2022 book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre. From 1990 to 2002, he was in a relationship with playwright Jon Robin Baitz. As of 2018, he resides in Manhattan with Paul Marlow, who owns a custom clothing company.