An actor turned Tony Award-winning Broadway director, Mantello has helmed everything from smash Broadway musicals (Wicked, Take Me Out, and Assassins) to star-studded failures (Three Days of Rain).

An Illinois native, Mantello attended the North Carolina School of the Arts (alongside Mary Louise Parker and writer/director Peter Hedges) before moving to New York in 1984 to pursue a career as an actor. He was one of the original Broadway cast members of Angels in America — a role which earned him a Tony nomination for Best Actor. In the mid-1990s, Mantello quit acting to try directing; he achieved his first taste of directorial success with Terrence McNally's gay ensemble piece, 1995's Love! Valour! Compassion!. Mantello has continued to be one of Broadway's most prolific directors, with experience in a number of genres, including episodic plays (The Vagina Monologues), musicals (Wicked), dramas (Take Me Out, Glengarry Glen Ross), and comedies (The Odd Couple).

Like any director, Mantello's had his share of misses, but none was more conspicuous than 2006's Three Days of Rain, in which Julia Roberts made her ill-considered Broadway debut. The play also starred Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, but despite featuring Hollywood heavyweights, critics were uniformly unimpressed by the show.

In 2011, Mantello directed Other Desert Cities, a drama penned by his former partner, Jon Robin Baitz. Though famous for a flaring temper, Mantello continues to have back-to-back projects lined up: following the close of Other Desert Cities, he is moving on to direct a new musical, Dogfight. [Image via Getty]