John Cameron Mitchell

American writer director actor Mitchell the son of a US Army general and a Scottish mother grew up on various army bases including Berlin later the family lived in Colorado Springs Colorado where he attended a Catholic school Since the mid1980s he has worked as a theatre actor and director in New York City and played small roles in television and film productions Among other things he directed a play by Tennessee Williams From 1991 he appeared in the original Broadway production of Marsha Norman and Lucy Simons musical adaptation of The Secret Garden which won several Tony Awards In the early 1990s together with musician Stephen Trask he developed the character of Hedwig a transgender rock musician who grew up in East Berlin for performances in the New York drag bar Squeezebox This led to the successful OffBroadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 1998 which won two Obie Awards and three years later to the film version of the musical again with himself in the title role The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Directors and Audience Awards and the play won the 2001 Lambda Literary Award At the 2002 Chlotrudis Awards he won the prize for best leading actor At the Berlin International Film Festival Berlinale in 2001 the film was shown in the PANORAMA section and won the Teddy Award In 2003 he produced the film Tarnation by Jonathan Caouette which was honoured as best documentary film by the US National Society of Film Critics among others In 2004 Mitchell shot the music video for the Scissor Sisters single FilthyGorgeous with stars from the New York drag scene The clip was not shown on American MTV due to its explicit sexual depictions