RuPaul
The world’s most famous drag queen turned a nightclub art form into a global television phenomenon.
RuPaul Andre Charles grew up in San Diego and later moved to Atlanta, where he studied performing arts and became part of the city’s punk and drag scene. In the 1980s he moved to New York and became a star of the club scene.
In 1993 his single “Supermodel (You Better Work)” became a hit, and its video made him a pop icon. He became the first drag queen to front a major cosmetics campaign, for MAC, raising money for AIDS research, and hosted his own talk show.
In 2009 he launched the television competition “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, in which drag queens compete in sewing, acting, comedy and lip-syncing. The show became a worldwide phenomenon with versions in many countries and made drag culture mainstream. RuPaul has won numerous Emmy Awards as host and producer.
RuPaul is openly gay and has been with his husband, the painter Georges LeBar, since 1994; they married in 2017. His famous motto: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”