RuPaul
Biography
RuPaul Andre Charles is an American drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model. Best known for producing, hosting and judging the reality competition series RuPauls Drag Race, he has received several accolades, including 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, three GLAAD Media Awards, a Critics Choice Television Award, two Billboard Music Awards and a Tony Award.
Born and raised in San Diego, California, RuPaul later studied performing arts in Atlanta, Georgia. He settled in New York City, where he became a popular fixture on the LGBTQ+ nightclub scene. He achieved international fame as a drag queen with the release of his debut single, "Supermodel (You Better Work)", which was included on his debut studio album Supermodel of the World (1993). He became a spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics in 1994, raising money for the Mac AIDS Fund and becoming the first drag queen to land a major cosmetics campaign. He later received his own talk show on VH1 called The RuPaul Show, which he hosted for over 100 episodes while co-hosting the morning radio show on WKTU with Michelle Visage.
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RuPauls Drag Race was created in 2009 and has gone on to produce seventeen seasons in the United States. The show has also seen success internationally, with several international variants of the show being made, such as RuPauls Drag Race UK and Canadas Drag Race. This has also inspired several spin-offs of the main show, including RuPauls Drag U, RuPauls Drag Race: All Stars, and RuPauls Secret Celebrity Drag Race. He is also featured as a host on other reality television series such as Skin Wars, Good Work, and Gay for Play Game Show Starring RuPaul.
RuPaul has made appearances in films such as Crooklyn (1994), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), But Im a Cheerleader (1999), television shows such as Girlboss (2017), Broad City (2017), and Grace and Frankie (2019). He later created and starred in his own Netflix original television series AJ and the Queen (2020). In addition, he has also published three books: Lettin It All Hang Out (1995), Workin It! RuPauls Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style (2010), and GuRu (2018).
RuPaul is considered the most commercially successful drag queen in the United States. For his work on RuPauls Drag Race, he has received 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, becoming the most-awarded person of color in the history of the Primetime Emmys. Outside of film and television, he also continues to write and record music; he has released fourteen studio albums as of 2022, and received a Tony Award for Best Musical as a producer for the musical A Strange Loop. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.