Gavin Creel, Tony-winning Broadway actor, dies at 48

Photo: Bruce Glikas/WireImage

Gavin Creel, one of the most famous musical actors of his generation, died on September 30, his partner Alex Temple Ward confirmed. He was 48 years old. Creel was diagnosed with cancer in July 2024 and was treated for a “rare and aggressive sarcoma,” according to a news release. He is survived by Ward and two sisters, Heather and Alyson Creel. Creel was born in 1976 and grew up Methodist in Findlay, Ohio. “I read stories that made me think, Oh my god, I’m fucked. I can’t be gay even though I want to look at these guys and God is a man in a pulpit telling me that homosexuality is a sin and these people are going to hell” Gavin told the Daily Beast in 2023. He came out at 25, around the same time his theater career took off.

Gavin first burst onto the Broadway scene in 2002 when he played Jimmy Smith Thoroughly modern Millieopposite fellow rising star Sutton Foster. The role earned him his first Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. He received his second nomination in the same category for hair in 2009. He eventually won a Tony for Best Lead Actor in a Musical in 2017 for his work in Hello Dolly!. He dedicated the award to the musical theater department at the University of Michigan, his alma mater.

In 2023, Creel performed an autobiographical show, Keep going throughabout his love for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and himself as a museum newbie who has learned to love art. In it he processed his relationships with men, religion and art. “During the writing process, during my life during the pandemic, I found it really difficult to lose everything that I thought gave me my identity,” the actor told TheaterMania in 2023. “And I said, ‘I’m going to write this.’ “I’m trying to heal, let go and find a way forward,” and I think I’m on that path. I finally own it and it’s a terrible thing to put on stage, and yet this is the theater I want to do if I’m lucky enough to do more.”