American comedian and actress Lea DeLaria was BOTD in 1958. Born in Belleville, Illinois, she moved to San Francisco in 1982 where she began performing stand-up comedy, defining herself proudly as “a big butch dyke with a smile on my face”. During the 1980s, she wrote and starred in gay-themed musical revues and the musical comedy Dos Lesbos about two lesbians living together. She is also credited as the originator of the “U-Haul Lesbian” joke (eventually canonised by Cate Blanchett in the 2022 film Tár). She made her breakthrough in 1993 with an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, becoming the first openly gay comic to appear on American television. Later that year, she hosted Comedy Central’s Out There comedy special. She made a vivid cameo in the 1996 hit film The First Wives Club, playing a butch dyke who hits on Goldie Hawn in a lesbian bar. After a successful Off-Broadway run of Paul Rudnick‘s musical The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, she appeared in Broadway revivals of On the Town and The Rocky Horror Show. After steady work throughout the 2000s, she had a career renaissance in 2013 as Carrie “Big Boo” Black in TV prison dramedy series Orange Is the New Black, appearing in all seven seasons. She returned to Broadway in 2022 in Selina Fillinger’s comedy POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. An accomplished jazz singer, she has also recorded five studio albums. DeLaria lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her relationship status is unknown.