Happy 40th Birthday to Anthony Rapp!

Happy 40th birthday to the very talented Anthony Rapp, the out star whose signature role is that of Mark Cohen in the original off-Broadway and Broadway productions and film version of  Rent.

Anthony has many other credits including the role of Charlie Brown in the 1999 revival of the musical You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown as well as the stage and film versions of Six Degrees of Separation.

The actor continues to embrace the Rent legacy and was part of a national tour in 2009. Five years ago, he released the memoir Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent which he also adapted into a one-man show.

“It’s about being in the show, my mom passed away while I was in the show and [playwright] Jonathan Larson who wrote the show passed away so it’s about the amazing fulfillment of being a part of that experience at the same time as these really difficult thing happened,” Anthony said when we spoke in late 2007. “The complicated colliding of all that.”