Gavin Creel, one of the most prominent musical-theater actors of his generation, died September 30, his partner, Alex Temple Ward, confirmed. He was 48. Creel was diagnosed with cancer in July 2024 and underwent treatment for “rare and aggressive sarcoma,” per a release. He is survived by Ward and two sisters, Heather and Alyson Creel. Born in 1976, Creel was raised Methodist in Findlay, Ohio. “I would read stories that left me thinking, Oh my God, I’m fucked. I can’t be gay, even though I want to look at those boys, and God is a man in a pulpit telling me that homosexuality is a sin and those people go to hell,” Gavin told the Daily Beast in 2023. He came out at 25, around the same time that his theater career started taking off.
Gavin first burst onto the Broadway scene in 2002 playing Jimmy Smith in Thoroughly Modern Millie, opposite fellow rising star Sutton Foster. The role earned him his first Tony nomination, Best Leading Actor in a Musical. He received his second nomination, in the same category, for Hair in 2009. He finally won a Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 2017 for his work in Hello Dolly!. He dedicated the award to the University of Michigan’s musical-theater department, his alma mater.
In 2023, Creel performed an autobiographical show, Walk on Through, about falling in love with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, billing himself as a museum novice who learned to love art. In it, he worked through his relationships with men, with religion, and with art. “I had a really hard time during the writing of it, during my life during the pandemic, losing everything that I thought gave me my identity,” the actor told TheaterMania in 2023. “And I said, ‘I’m gonna write this piece to try to heal and let go and find a way forward,’ and I think I’m on that path. I’m finally owning it, and it’s terrifying to put it on stage, and yet, this is the theater that I want to make, if I’m lucky enough to get to create more.”
