Michael Rupert

Michael Rupert, born October 23, 1951, in Denver, Colorado, is an American actor, singer, director, and composer whose Broadway career spans from 1968 to 2014. He is recognized for originating several notable roles across decades of work in musical theater, as well as for composing scores for both Broadway and Off-Broadway productions.

Rupert entered Broadway at age 16 when he was cast as the young Bibi Bonnard in Kander and Ebb's The Happy Time in 1968. That debut performance earned him the Theatre World Award and a Tony Award nomination for Featured Actor in a Musical. At the 22nd Tony Awards ceremony, he performed numbers from the show alongside castmates Robert Goulet and David Wayne. Following the production's run, he returned to California, continued performing in local theater during high school, and appeared in the Disney film The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, as well as in the role of Gery in the 1975 film adaptation of A Boy and His Dog.

He came back to Broadway in 1974 as a replacement in the title role of Pippin, a part he held for three years. In 1981, he appeared on Broadway in Shakespeare's Cabaret and that same year originated the role of Marvin in William Finn's March of the Falsettos at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons. He reprised the role in Falsettoland in 1990, which also began at Playwrights Horizons before transferring to the Lucille Lortel Theater. When the two pieces were combined under the title Falsettos in 1992, Rupert again played Marvin, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical that year.

In 1986, Rupert appeared as Oscar in the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, a performance that brought him the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. Two years later, he originated the role of Alex in the 1988 Broadway musical Mail, for which he also composed the music, with book and lyrics by Jerry Colker. He subsequently joined City of Angels as a replacement in the role of Stine in 1989 and appeared in Ragtime as a replacement Tateh in 1999.

Rupert originated the role of Professor Callahan in the 2007 Broadway production of Legally Blonde and reprised the role on the national tour beginning in February 2010. In 2003, he performed alongside Betty Buckley, Christian Borle, Carolee Carmello, and Keith Bryon Kirk in the Lincoln Center staging of William Finn's Elegies: A Song Cycle. He played Kenneth Sharpe in the Off-Broadway play 7th Monarch at the Acorn Theater, which opened in June 2012, and appeared as Judge Pitkin in the Broadway revival of On the Town, which ran from October 2014 to September 2015.

Beyond performing, Rupert has worked as a director and composer. He directed an Off-Broadway production of The Lunch Anxieties by Larry Kunofsky at the Harold Clurman Theatre in 1997, an Equity workshop of J. Arlington Meyrelles III's The Stars In Your Eyes in 1998, and Thrill Me: Leopold & Loeb Story at the York Theatre in 2005. As a composer, he wrote the music for the 1985 Off-Broadway production 3 Guys Naked from the Waist Down, with book and lyrics again by Colker, which won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book and received a nomination for Outstanding Music. He composed the score for Strange Vacation in 1998 in collaboration with Allan Heinberg, and wrote the score and co-wrote the book and lyrics with Matthew Riopelle for Streets of America in 2007. On August 18, 2008, his single "Racing to the Moon" was released on the Footlight label in three versions: one performed by Rupert, one by actor Sebastian Arcelus, and an instrumental version by guitarist David Timmons.

His television work includes guest appearances on My Three Sons, The Waltons, Marcus Welby M.D., Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, Another World, Emergency!, Cannon, Alice, The Partridge Family, Alias Smith and Jones, Hawkins, Cheers, Law & Order, and New York Undercover. In regional theater, he starred as Norbert in a workshop production of The Happy Elf, composed by Harry Connick Jr., presented in November 2010 at Montgomery College's Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center in Rockville, Maryland, in a co-production with Adventure Theatre in Washington, D.C. Rupert lives in New York City with his life partner, Will Chafin.