Charles Busch

Charles Busch
Busch at the Drama League Benefit Gala in 2010
Born	(1954-08-23) August 23, 1954 (age 62) New York City
Occupation	Female impersonator, screenwriter, actor, playwright

Charles Louis Busch (born August 23, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and female impersonator, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays Off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He also wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best known play is The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.

Busch was born in 1954 and grew up in Hartsdale, New York. He is the Jewish son of Gertrude (née Young) and Benjamin Busch. His father wanted to be an opera singer but owned a record store. His mother died when Busch was 7. He has two older sisters: Meg Busch, who used to be a producer of promotional spots for Showtime, and Betsy Busch, a textile designer. Busch's aunt, Lillian Blum, his mother's oldest sister and a former teacher, brought him to live in Manhattan after the death of his mother. She told an interviewer: "He was so shy it was almost pathological. ... Before he moved in with me, I would pick him up in Hartsdale on a Friday afternoon, and he would be like a zombie. But the minute we crossed the river to New York he was absolutely a new boy." Busch was intensely interested in films as a young child, especially those with female leads from the 30s and 40s. Blum insisted that Busch read the front page of the newspaper every day to help him keep at least one foot in the real world.

Busch attended The High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. He majored in drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and received his B.A. in 1976. While at the university, Busch had difficulty being cast in plays and began to write his own material, such as a play called Sister Act about siamese twin showgirls, which succeeded in drawing interest on campus.