RuPaul

American actor, drag queen, television personality, and recording artist. Since 2009, he has hosted and produced the drag queen reality show RuPaul's Drag Race, for which he won an Emmy in 2016.

A black, 6' 5" (195 cm) drag queen who is an image of class and glamour in full costume, RuPaul grew up in a houseful of women, with his mom, Ernestine, and sisters Renetta, Renne and Rosalind. His mom ruled the roost, undemonstrative except when she let loose with her big temper.

RuPaul realized at age eight that he was gay. When he went into the hospital for a hernia operation, he saw a nude man and had so vivid an emotional response that it was an epiphany. He had an awkward adolescence, moving toward a career as a drag performer. In 1982 he appeared on public access TV in the American Awards Show, dressed as a woman. He worked at night as a go-go dancer, spending his 20s experimenting with uppers, downers, heroin and coke until he ended up homeless and broke.

At 26, he moved back home to his mom for a period of reappraisal, a personal and spiritual overhaul, emerging with a new sense of identity and comfortable with himself, "I'm black, I'm gay and I'm a man." He is the author of an autobiography "Lettin' It All Hang Out."

RuPaul achieved international fame as a drag queen with the hit song "Supermodel (You Better Work)" from his album Supermodel of the World (1993) and later dueted with Elton John on the song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart".

RuPaul has been with his Australian partner, Georges LeBar, since 1994, when they met at the Limelight nightclub in New York City. They married in January 2017. LeBar is a painter and runs a 50,000-acre (200,000,000 m2) ranch in Wyoming.