American theatre critic Ben Brantley was BOTD in 1954. Born in Durham, North Carolina, he studied at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, beginning his journalistic career at The Village Voice. He wrote for and later edited Women’s Wear Daily magazine, while freelancing for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He joined the New York Times as a theatre critic in 1993, becoming chief critic in 1996. Known for his arch, often bitchy reviews, baroque prose and encyclopaedic knowledge of theatre, he was a prominent critic of Hollywood stars appearing on Broadway to boost ticket sales. His negative review of James Franco in Of Mice and Men prompted the actor to call him “a little bitch”, while Alec Baldwin called him an “odd, shriveled, bitter Dickensian clerk” after a negative review of Baldwin’s play Orphans. Brantley was also infamous for savaging Broadway jukebox musicals and big-budget musical adaptations of Disney movies. In his 2008 review for the musical The Little Mermaid, he commented that the show “achieves the dubious miracle of translating an animated cartoon into something that feels like less than two dimensions“. A noted Anglophile, he undertook regular reviewing visits to London, helping raise the profiles of English actors Janet McTeer, Mark Rylance, Carey Mulligan and Anglo-Irish playwrights Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh and Jez Butterworth. He also championed the careers of American playwrights Tony Kushner, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Suzan Lori-Parks and the work of the Belarus Free Theatre. A collection of his more favourable reviews were published in The New York Times Book of Broadway. In 2017, playwrights Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel criticised Brantley for his perceived preference for straight white male writers. The following year, his review of the musical Head Over Heels was widely criticised for perceived transphobic comments, prompting the Times to edit the article and Brantley to issue a public apology. He stepped down as chief theatre critic of the Times in 2020. Openly gay since forever, he lives in New York and London. His relationship status is unknown.