Billy Porter

Billy Porter Basic Information

Stage Name:	Billy Porter
Real Name:	William Ellis Porter II
Occupation:	Actor, Singer, Writer
Date Of Birth/Age:	September 21, 1969 (54) Years Old
Place of Birth:	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Gender:	Male
Nationality:	American
Marital Status:	Divorced
Education:	Carnegie Mellon University (BFA) University of California, Los Angeles (GrDip)
Height:	1.78 m
Net Worth:	$5M

Billy Porter Biography

William Ellis Porter II, born September 21, 1969, is an American actor, singer, writer, and director. He rose to prominence on Broadway after receiving a degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University before embarking on a solo performing and singing career. Porter received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2013 for his performance as Lola in Kinky Boots.

Porter also received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical for the role. Kinky Boots won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in 2014.

He received three Golden Globe nominations and won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, making him the first gay black male to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Emmys.

Family

Parents

Porter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to William Ellis Porter and Cloerinda Jean Johnson Porter Ford. He was up in a “very religious” Pentecostal family and claims that his stepfather sexually abused him between the ages of 7 and 12.

Siblings

Adria and Allison Porter are Porter’s two sisters. Smith is the proud uncle of nine nieces and nephews as a result of their marriages and children.

Children

Billy has no kids…yet. He does have a song named “Children,” though.

Husband

Billy Porter was married to Adam Smith for six years before they divorced this year. They initially met in February 2009 at a dinner party for mutual friends. Smith was seated next to Porter by chance, as he subsequently discovered. Porter and Smith married less than three weeks after getting engaged in 2017. The couple married so swiftly because they wanted to make things official while Barack Obama was still president before Donald Trump took over.

Smith is now a businessman, but he aspired to be an actor like Porter. He attended the California Institute of the Arts and majored in theater. In 2008, he worked as a sales expert at Chanel in New York City, and then as a sales director at Jill Sanders and Dita Eyewear.

Lifestyle

Net Worth

According to CelebrityNetWorth.com, his net worth is $5 million. Billy Porter has appeared in a number of films and television series throughout the 1990s. All of this has contributed to his wealth.

Cars

Billy’s cars are not known to the public.

House

The Kinky Boots alum reportedly bought his 4,500-square-foot Long Island property with his estranged husband in 2020. Except for its present value of $2,307,700, little is known about Porter’s property.

Movies & TV Shows

Porter starred as Teen Angel in the Broadway version of Grease in 1994. Topdog/Underdog at City Theatre (2004), Jesus Christ Superstar and Dreamgirls at Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (2004), and the song cycles Myths and Hymns and Songs for a New World (Off-Broadway, 1995) are among his other credits.

Porter debuted as “Lola” in Kinky Boots on Broadway in 2013. For this role, Porter received both the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2013. Porter has also appeared in a number of films.

In Seth Michael Donsky’s Twisted (1997), an adaption of Oliver Twist, he plays Shiniqua, a drag queen who befriends Angel (David Norona) and Lee (Keivyn McNeill Graves). He’s also made an appearance on The RuPaul Show.