American comedian and actor Paul Ruebens was BOTD in 1952. Born in Peeskill, New York, he was raised in New York and Florida. He studied drama at the California Institute of the Arts, joined improvisational troupe The Groundlings in 1978. After a failed audition for TV sketch show Saturday Night Live, he developed a stage show as his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, an effeminate and sweetly naïve man-child who comically misconstrues adult sexuality. The character quickly became a cult figure, leading to a 1981 TV special and the successful 1985 film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure directed by Tim Burton. A 1998 sequel, Big Top Pee-wee, was less successful, though he continued the role in the astonishingly successful children’s TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse, winning 15 Emmy Awards over its five-year run. In 1991, Reubens was arrested for masturbating in a porn theatre, igniting a tabloid media frenzy and effectively terminating his career. He made a comeback in the late 1990s with small roles in the films Mystery Men and Blow, and TV series Murphy Brown, 30 Rock, Portlandia and The Blacklist. In 2002, he was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography, following the discovery of his collection of 70,000 items of erotic magazines and films. He pled guilty to a lesser charge of an obscenity misdemeanour and was placed on a sexual offender’s register for three years. Bafflingly, he exhumed The Pee-wee Herman Show in New York and Los Angeles, writing and starring in the 2016 Netflix film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday. Reubens was in a relationship with fellow CalArts student Guy Brown in the 1970s, ending in Brown’s death from an AIDS-related illness. Reubens remained in the closet for the rest of his life, faking relationships with friends Valeria Golino and Debi Mazar to deflect rumours about his sexuality. He died of cancer in 2023, aged 70. In 2025, the documentary Pee-wee as Himself was released on Netflix, based on interviews made with Reubens made before his death, discussing his sexuality, arrests and unhappy life of quiet self-loathing.