Gavin Creel, a Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor, passed away on September 30, 2024, at the age of 48. He passed away in his Manhattan home. Creel, renowned for his performances on both Broadway and the West End, succumbed to metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma. It is an aggressive and rare form of cancer he had been diagnosed with in July 2024.
His publicist, Matt Polk, confirmed his death to Entertainment Weekly on behalf of his partner, Alex Temple Ward. Gavin Creel was most known for his performances like Thoroughly Modern Millie, Hair, and Hello Dolly! Per the outlet, a funeral will be held at a later date, and his family has requested donations to the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Who was Gavin Creel, the acclaimed Tony and Grammy Award-winning actor?
Gavin Creel dipped his toes in the world of Broadway about two decades ago. His debut role saw him star as Jimmy Smith in the 2002 musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, alongside Sutton Foster. The show went on to win him a Tony nomination for Best Actor, and he won the same about seven years later for his role as Claude in the 2009 Broadway revival of Hair.
Come 2014, the Midwesterner nabbed the Olivier for his work as Elder Price in the 2014 musical, The Book of Mormon. He also went on to embody the role of Hollis Bessemer in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce and played Jean-Michel in the revival of La Cage aux Folles in 2017. However, it was his performance in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly! as Cornelius, opposite Bette Middler, that gave him his first Tony win that same year.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2018:
"That show wasn’t a musical. It was an event. I tried to play it cool, act like it made sense, but it didn’t make any sense.”
Speaking with Broadway Collection in May 2024, Creel reflected on his journey to becoming an acclaimed performer. He revealed that it was a production of Camelot he did in high school that drove him to bigger things:
"I knew I got bit by the bug because when that show ended, I was depressed. The show was fun, the music was great, but it was about the people I was with. We were all in a common, passionate goal to tell a story. I wanted that for a living. I wanted to be a part of that for my life."
Some of his other well-known projects include La Cage aux Folles (2004), She Loves Me (2016), Waitress (2019), and the memorable Into the Woods (2022), for which he won a Grammy Award the next year. Gavin Creel also ventured into the world of film, having worked on a Ryan Murphy project, American Horror Stories, in 2021 and movies like Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime.
In an interview with Metrosource in October 2023, the Broadway star touched on some of his personal struggles:
"Everybody looks at me from the outside and thinks, oh, that guy in the fluorescent coat and that guy with the Tony and the guy with all these things, what are you talking about? You’re always so happy when I read about you and you’re smiling. Both things can be true. Yes, I can be blissfully happy and also deeply anxious and severely lonely.”
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Gavin Creel was the youngest of three children, He is survived by his mother, Nancy Clemens Creel, and father, James William Creel, as well as his sisters, Heather Elise Creel and Allyson Jo Creel; and his partner, Alex Temple Ward.
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