The boyish Broadway producer is the money behind hits like Rent, Avenue Q, and In the Heights.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1986, Seller moved to New York to take a job as a theater publicist. In the early 1990s he turned to production, teaming up with Kevin McCollum to found a company called The Producing Office. Their first major success came a few years later when they bought the commercial rights to Jonathan Larson's Rent for just $4,000, and minted millions as the show swept the globe and became a cultural touchstone. The re-imagining of Puccini's La Bohème proved one of the most successful franchises in Broadway history, spawning countless productions around the world, and yielding a big-screen adaptation produced by Seller and McCollum along with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro. The show charmed Midwestern tourists at the Nederlander Theatre for 12 years before a final, plaintive performance of "Seasons of Love" in 2008.

Avenue Q and In the Heights, both Seller-backed musicals, won the Tony for Best Musical, in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Not everything Seller touches wins a Tony, though: in 2006, he and McCollum backed a stage-adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. The $10 million show earned mostly dreadful reviews and closed after just 14 performances.

Seller lives with his longtime partner in NYC. [Image via Getty]