Possibly the most celebrated playwright of his generation, Tony Kushner is most famous for his epic work about the AIDS crisis, Angels in America.

Although he's the son of two New Yorkers, Kushner grew up in the south. He started his theater career shortly after graduating from Columbia, penning his first play, The Age of Assassins, in 1982. He went on to write for a children's repertory company in St. Louis before hitting the creative jackpot in the early '90s with the two-part, seven-hour Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The play made Kushner an instant star, winning a Pulitzer, a Tony, and a Drama Desk award, among many other distinctions. Perhaps the most acclaimed American drama of the late 20th century, Kushner has since expanded into a number of other genres, dipping a toe into the musical theater with Caroline, or Change, collaborating with Maurice Sendak on the 2005 Czech opera Brundibar, translating some of Bertolt Brecht's works, and writing screenplays, like Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln, while still writing politically charged plays like Homebody/ Kabul.

Kushner wed his longtime partner, Entertainment Weekly editor Mark Harris in a Jewish commitment ceremony in 2003. Kushner has also turned his attention to activism: He frequently gives pithy speeches at colleges across the country, in which he can be counted on to criticize the Bush administration and Israel, which has made him a bête noir among conservatives and right-wing Jews. [Image via Getty]