Lea DeLaria

Lea DeLaria is an American comedian, actress, and jazz singer born on May 23, 1958, in Belleville, Illinois. Her father, Robert George DeLaria, was a jazz pianist and social worker of Italian paternal heritage, and her mother, Jerry Jean (née Cox), was a homemaker. DeLaria attended St. Mary's Elementary School in Belleville from kindergarten through eighth grade and has drawn on her Catholic upbringing in her performances.

DeLaria began her stand-up career in 1982 after relocating to San Francisco, where she performed comedy in the Mission District. In 1986 she directed Ten Percent Revue, a musical revue written by Tom Wilson Weinberg celebrating gay and lesbian culture, which was staged in Boston, San Francisco, Provincetown, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. From 1987 to 1989 she starred in Dos Lesbos, a musical comedy about two lesbians navigating life together, which received favorable reviews. In 1989 she conceived, wrote, directed, and starred in Girl Friday: We're Funny That Way, a musical comedy that won the Golden Gull for Best Comedy Group in Provincetown, Massachusetts that same year.

In 1993, DeLaria became the first openly gay comic to perform on a late-night American television talk show when she appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show. That December she hosted Comedy Central's Out There, the first all-gay stand-up comedy special. She has released two comedy recordings, Bulldyke in a China Shop (1994) and Box Lunch (1997), the latter of which features her origination of the U-Haul joke, which she had first performed at comedy shows in 1989. She also authored a humorous book, Lea's Book of Rules for the World.

DeLaria's Broadway career spans 1996 to 2022. She played Eddie and Dr. Scott in the 2000 revival of The Rocky Horror Show, a performance documented on the production's cast recording. Her portrayal of Hildy Esterhazy in the 1998 Broadway revival of On the Town earned her a Theatre World Award that year. In 2022 she returned to Broadway in the comic play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. Her Broadway credits also include Hair and My Love Letter to Broadway. In 1998, prior to her Theatre World Award, she appeared Off Broadway as Jane in Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told.

As a jazz performer, DeLaria integrates musical performance into her stand-up work, with a focus on traditional and modern bebop. She released the jazz standards album Play It Cool in 2001, followed by Double Standards in 2003, The Very Best of Lea DeLaria in 2008, and The Live Smoke Sessions, a collection of pop standards, also in 2008. A subsequent jazz album, House of David, appeared in 2015.

DeLaria's screen work includes film appearances in Edge of Seventeen and The First Wives Club. In 1996 she appeared in the Friends episode "The One with the Lesbian Wedding." Beginning in 1999 she played the recurring role of Psychic Madame Delphina on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live, returning in 2008 in that role as well as the character Professor Delbert Fina, and continuing to portray Delphina until 2011. In 2001 she provided the voice of Helga Phugly on the animated series The Oblongs, and in 2014 she voiced EJ Randell on the Cartoon Network series Clarence. From 2013 to 2019 she portrayed prison inmate Carrie "Big Boo" Black on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. In 2021 she appeared in Wes Hurley's film Potato Dreams of America, for which she received the Outstanding Supporting Performance Award from the Tallgrass Film Festival.

In February 2015, DeLaria received the Equality Illinois Freedom Award at the organization's annual gala in Chicago. She was born and raised in Belleville, Illinois, and has publicly identified the city as her home state connection on receiving the honor.